Skip to content

Atlas / NTSB / ATL86FA208

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event ATL86FA208

1986-07-24 RALEIGH, North Carolina, United States Airport · RDU Fatal 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

THE PLT WAS ISSUED RWY 5, 7,500', FOR IFR DEPARTURE WITH FAVORING 4 KT QUARTERING HEADWIND. PLT REQUESTED RWY 14, 4,498', FOR TAKEOFF WITH A 4 KT QUARTERING TAILWIND. GROUND WITNESS AND CONTROL TOWER OBSERVED ACFT USE NEARLY ALL OF THE RWY ON TAKEOFF ROLL. AFTER AN ABRUPT ROTATION, THE CONTROLLER OBSERVED ACFT YAW TO LEFT AND MAKE A LOW ALT LEFT TURN. SECONDS LATER THE ACFT RAPIDLY DESCENDED INTO TREES AND CAUGHT FIRE. THE LEFT PROPELLER WAS FOUND IN THE FEATHERED POSITION AND THE LEFT ENGINE WAS CONSUMED BY A GROUND FIRE. THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF ANY INTERNAL ENGINE FAILURE. THE ENGINE TIME SMOH WAS 43 HRS. WITNESS HEARD THE ACFT TAKEOFF WITH A SERIES OF LOUD BACKFIRES 25 DAYS PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT. INJECTOR NOZZLES ON THE RIGHT ENGINE WERE LEANED TO CORRECT THE PROBLEM AFTER 6 HRS OF OPERATION ONE WEEK LATER. THE PLTS LOG FAILED TO SHOW ANY RECENT TRAINING IN SINGLE ENGINE PROCEDURES. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1986_ATL86FA208.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (engine failure). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗