Originally Posted by
QRH Bingo
While I do agree with these two in spirit, the definition does muddy the water a bit.
830.2 defines an incident as “an occurrence other than an accident, associated with the operation of an aircraft, which affects or could affect the safety of operations."
830.5 Immediate Notification, subsection (a) “An aircraft accident or any of the following listed serious incidents occur" : (4) In-flight fire;
There is no specification as to what type of fire this pertains to.
100% true and the NTSB doesn't really do incidents anyway. That's basically left up to the FAA to decide and it's subjective. There's no set cutoff between an occurrence and incident. If the NTSB does not classify it as an accident, then it's left for the FAA to decide if it's an incident or occurrence. Occurrences don't make the pilot record, but incidents do, and the FAA holds the pilot record, not the NTSB.
If it happened today, it would likely get classified as an incident, but another facet is that current guidance for the FAA is that they are not allowed to enter the pilot's name and information into the incident report if the pilot actions were not contributing to the event.
But in the past, they did, just as a matter of procedure, whether it was the pilot's fault or not.
So the answer is, "could be". You have to check out your record in the PRD to know.