Pilot Hears Loud Bang | Flames Erupt from Right Wing

The Bang, Then the Flames

It came without warning — a loud bang, and then flames visible from the right wing, shortly after takeoff on 8 June 2018 near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The commercial pilot at the controls had no mechanical indication beforehand that anything was wrong. One moment the flight was climbing out normally; the next, fire was burning on the wing at 4:05 p.m.

She got the aircraft down. A safe emergency landing, executed under conditions that would rattle even an experienced pilot — an airplane on fire, close to the ground, with no time to work through the problem beyond getting it onto a runway as fast as safely possible. The aircraft sustained substantial damage. She survived, and so did whoever else was aboard.

What Investigators Found in the Soot

The NTSB's investigation, filed under case number CEN18LA221, went looking for what could produce an explosion and fire on a wing with no prior warning. What they found was in the wiring: black soot, fuel staining, and improperly insulated wiring near the right wingtip — specifically around the anticollision light circuit, the wiring that powers the wingtip's warning strobe.

Chafed or improperly insulated wiring, sitting in proximity to a fuel source, is a known and specific hazard. If insulation wears through or was never adequate to begin with, the wiring can arc — and if that arc happens somewhere fuel vapor has collected or fuel has leaked, the result is exactly what this flight experienced: ignition, not from any single dramatic failure, but from two ordinary problems — a wiring defect and a fuel leak — meeting in the same place at the same time.

A Warning That Existed Already

The investigation surfaced something else worth noting: a manufacturer safety communique had already been issued, warning operators of this exact type about fire risks tied to fuel leaks and wiring chafing in this area of the aircraft. The warning existed in the system before this flight ever took off — whether it had reached this particular aircraft's maintenance records, or been acted upon if it had, is the kind of detail investigations like this one are built to surface.

What Burned Away the Evidence

Not every question got answered. The fire itself, by the time it was extinguished, had destroyed much of the physical evidence that might have pinned down exactly where the fuel leak originated — investigators could establish that a leak fed the fire, and that improperly insulated wiring near the anticollision light likely provided the ignition source, but the fire damage made it impossible to trace the leak back to its precise point of origin with full certainty.

The NTSB's probable cause reflects that limit honestly: improper insulation of the anticollision light wiring, leading to ignition of leaking fuel vapor — with the exact source of the leak itself left undetermined, because the same fire that made the emergency real also erased the evidence that would have closed the last open question.

A Landing Under Fire

The Hazard Hiding in Ordinary Wear

Wiring chafe is one of the least dramatic-sounding failure modes in aviation maintenance, and one of the most persistent.

When a Warning Exists but Doesn't Prevent the Failure

The manufacturer safety communique referenced in the NTSB's findings represents a system working partially as intended: someone, somewhere, had identified this specific fire risk — fuel leaks combined with wiring chafe near the wingtip — seriously enough to issue a formal warning to operators before this flight ever happened.

The investigation explains what caused the fire.