IAD98LA076 · Cessna 172M
Cessna 172M · Accident: loss of control on ground/water while standing
From an unrecorded airport to Lake Cumberland Regional Airport (SME)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA076
- 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
Cessna 172M Possible conflict
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N12187
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Lake Cumberland Regional Airport (SME)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a preflight inspection, at 0100 local time, in preparation for a pleasure flight with two friends. The pilot reported that he discovered the battery was dead, and not wanting to disappoint his friends, decided to hand-prop the airplane for engine start. After 2-3 minutes, the engine caught and the airplane lurched forward. The pilot stated that the left wing and the empennage tie down ropes fell off, and the airplane began to pivot around the right wing tie down rope. He reported that he gave chase to the airplane, but was hit by either the left wing strut or horizontal stab as the empennage swung around. The runaway airplane then collided with an airplane parked in an adjacent parking spot. The pilot stated that he never hand-propped an airplane before, nor had he received instruction on how to hand-prop an airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to follow procedures to hand-prop the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA076
- Event ID
- 20001211X10605
- Case number
- IAD98LA076
- 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: dc3493527802f34dcf623989c031ea1768dd1dee89a60ef048ef885f7bae7786; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:25:33.583Z.