SEA01LA169 · Cessna 172N
Cessna 172N · Accident: propeller blast or jet exhaust/suction while taxiing
From Tri Cities Airport (PSC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA169
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N426SK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tri Cities Airport (PSC), Pasco, WATo not recorded
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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 blast or jet exhaust/suction
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Communications, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident aircraft, piloted by a solo student, was attempting to taxi onto runway 30 for takeoff behind a Horizon Air DHC-8 undergoing a maintenance engine run in a runup area on the northeast side of the approach end of runway 30. The student pilot stated that after completing his preflight checklist, he waited, believing that the DHC-8 was about to take the runway for departure, but that when this did not happen he requested and received takeoff clearance for runway 30. The tower controller did not issue any cautionary advisories for the DHC-8 activity to the student pilot with the takeoff clearance. The student pilot reported that after starting toward the runway, "I was more than half way past behind [sic] the Horizon plane, when they revved their engines." The propeller blast from the DHC-8 forced the accident aircraft to tip to the left and forward, causing it to strike its wingtip and propeller on the taxiway surface. The aircraft continued to be buffeted by the propeller blast of the DHC-8 for several more minutes as the DHC-8 continued to do its engine run. The tower was subsequently unable to reach the DHC-8 on the radio. The DHC-8 crew, a pair of Horizon Air mechanics, continued its engine run until it was approached and signaled by an airport operations vehicle dispatched to the scene by the tower. About this time, the tower re-established radio contact with the DHC-8 and instructed the DHC-8 crew to reduce engine power. In interviews with an FAA inspector, the Horizon Air mechanics indicated they did not know how or why they lost radio contact with the tower. FAA Order 7110.65N, "Air Traffic Control", instructs controllers to "Issue [wake turbulence] cautionary information [to include use of the words jet blast, propwash, or rotorwash] to any aircraft [including those on the airport movement area] if in your opinion, wake turbulence may have an adverse effect on it." However, Order 7110.65N further states that "Because wake turbulence is unpredictable, the controller is not responsible for anticipating its existence or effect." A review of FAA Air Traffic Bulletins found no information on jet blast/prop blast hazards.
Probable cause
The DHC-8 maintenance crew's failure to maintain radio contact with the tower during its engine run. Factors included the tower controller not issuing a safety advisory on the DHC-8 engine run to the accident pilot as recommended by FAA guidance, and the FAA's failure to make information on jet blast/prop blast hazards available to controllers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA169
- Event ID
- 20010924X01980
- Case number
- SEA01LA169
- 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: 05028cc156c8bf1060f370e6b33895de734a217e75bcb1a20c77a0ac3f7d5c00; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:34:51.784Z.