ATL84LA170 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From Nashville International Airport (BNA) to 313 · Terre Haute, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL84LA170
- 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 172N
- 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
- N733GY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashville International Airport (BNA)To 313 · Terre Haute, IN
- 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 › Judgment, poor
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PLT REPORTED THAT AFTER HE & HIS PASSENGERS WERE ABOARD THE ACFT, THE ENG WAS RUNNING & GROUND CONTROL HAD CLEARED HIM TO TAXI WHEN HE DISCOVERED THAT THE LEFT MAIN WHEEL WAS STILL CHOCKED, PREVENTING FORWARD MOVEMENT OF THE ACFT. HE WAS SETTING HIS PARKING BRAKE WHEN THE PASSENGER IN THE RIGHT FRONT SEAT UNSTRAPPED & EXITED THE ACFT, WITHOUT ANY INSTRUCTION FROM THE PLT. THE PLT INITIATED AN ENG SHUTDOWN; HOWEVER, HE WAS UNABLE TO SHUT IT DOWN BEFORE THE PASSENGER WALKED FORWARD INTO THE ARC OF THE PROPELLER. THE PLT STATED THAT THE LIGHTS ON TOP OF THE HANGAR PROVIDED GOOD ILLUMINATION.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL84LA170
- Event ID
- 20001214X39476
- Case number
- ATL84LA170
- 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 1984-05-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5ee411e1eb57c87cac0acd28857c26eadc49cba9d72e3a9e5d07a94483cb54f3; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:32:19.312Z.