NYC99LA063 · Piper PA 32R-301
Piper PA 32R-301 · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) to Orange County Airport (MGJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA063
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 1
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Piper PA 32R-301
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-32
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N3559U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD)To Orange County Airport (MGJ), Montgomery, NY
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Propeller/rotor contact to person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Fbo personnel › Diverted attention
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A Signature Flight Support Employee was fatally injured when he came in contact with the rotating propeller of an airplane. The airplane was parked, with the engine operating, while the pilot transcribed the Automated Terminal Information Service (ATIS). The pilot reported that he removed the chock around the main landing gear, and placed the chock around the front landing gear in an 'L' position. Witnesses reported that the employee was focused on the front landing gear as he bent down into the propeller. Co-workers stated that the employee may have been distracted due to several domestic issues. The employee had been with the company for approximately 3 weeks, and had no prior aviation experience. Investigation of Signature Flight Support by state and federal agencies revealed no deficiencies in the training programs.
Probable cause
The FBO employee's diverted attention, resulting in an inadvertent encounter with a rotating propeller.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA063
- Event ID
- 20001205X00233
- Case number
- NYC99LA063
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 208f248198e9922446b25182513052ef185a2552e90d71efb10de08a2929173e; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:14:03.271Z.