NYC97LA106 · Piper PA-17
Piper PA-17 · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From 1B9 to Chatham Municipal Airport (CQX)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA106
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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-17
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-17
- 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
- N4832H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1B9To Chatham Municipal Airport (CQX), CHATAM, MA
- 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) start-up
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Other person › Starting procedure, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mansfield, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger had flown to the airport earlier to have breakfast. While preparing for engine start the pilot noted that the engine was still '...hot.' He stated that the engine was difficult to start when warm and that it flooded quickly if not started right away. The pilot said the passenger hand-propped the airplane unsuccessfully 8 to 10 times and the engine flooded. The pilot stated that he turned the magneto switch to 'off,' pushed the throttle in, and instructed the passenger to pull the propeller through backwards 12 times to clear the flooded engine. The pilot stated: 'At this point a guy walks up and says, 'I'll take it from here.' The guy yelled, 'mags off!', and I yelled 'mags off, but wait a minute!' He was way too close to the spinner. He pulled it through, I heard this 'clunk', and he fell down out of my view. The airplane did not start. We got out of the plane and saw that it hit his left knee. A witness who observed the pilot and passenger as they attempted to handprop start the engine described their actions as 'extremely thorough and conscientious.' According to the witness, the other person came over. The pilot waved him away, but he pulled the propeller through..
Probable cause
The inadequate procedure for hand-prop starting of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA106
- Event ID
- 20001208X08213
- Case number
- NYC97LA106
- 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. 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: f5cce3e8bd7f6c5063b118dc4246a46b5dea5372b0573298764b364b4c24bfb0; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:03:25.929Z.