LAX99LA019 · Cessna 182Q
Cessna 182Q · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH) to Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA019
- 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
- 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 182Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 182
- 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
- N5352N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fresno Chandler Executive Airport (FCH)To Watsonville Municipal Airport (WVI), Watsonville, CA
- 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
- Passenger › Visual lookout, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was waiting in the transient tie down parking ramp near the terminal for his passengers to arrive. They contacted him by cell phone and told him they were in the terminal parking lot and would be there shortly and to start the engine. The pilot said he then got into the airplane, started the engine and turned on the strobes and navigation lights, then waited for the passengers to come. He said he waited an additional 5 to 6 minutes after he saw a group of people near the fence gate which leads to the transient parking area. After looking at the instruments he looked up and saw one of the intended passengers in front of the wing tip walking toward the engine. The passenger walked into the rotating propeller just as the pilot attempted to shut down the engine. The moon was near the western horizon and not visible. The nearest street light standards illuminating the area were 52 and 66 feet away from the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to allow unescorted passengers to approach the aircraft with the engine running, and, the passenger's failure to see and avoid the rotating propeller. A factor in the accident was the low ambient lighting conditions, which would have made the rotating propeller difficult to see.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA019
- Event ID
- 20001211X11297
- Case number
- LAX99LA019
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-10-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9f8a9bae14ccd5083cea4b91938b824131e3d04e875781f642b8f1e54937f97c; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:20:31.259Z.