MIA02LA009 · Cessna 172P
Cessna 172P · Accident while standing
From McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS) to Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport (JAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA009
- 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 172P
- 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
- N52685
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McGhee Tyson Airport (TYS), Knoxville, TNTo Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport (JAN), Jackson, MS
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inattentive
- Pilot in command › Aircraft unattended/engine(s) running, performed
- Pilot in command › Checklist, not complied with
- Pilot in command › Parking brakes, inadvertent deactivation
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Knoxville, TN, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, as he added power to commence taxi, he realized that he overlooked removing a chock from his right wheel, and instead of shutting down the engine, decided to set his parking brake, leaving the engine running while he removed the chock. Somehow in sliding out of his seat, he must have bumped the parking brake handle enough to disengage it, because when the chock was removed, the aircraft began movement. The ramp was slightly downhill, and he was unable to catch the aircraft until it collided with two airport terminal concrete columns. The aircraft sustained wing spar damage, and his passenger was uninjured.
Probable cause
The pilot's inattentive preflight inspection, non-compliance with the prestart checklist, decision to leave the cockpit unattended with engine running, and his inadvertent deactivation of the parking brake as he exited to remove a wheel chock, resulting in non-piloted taxi from the aircraft's starting point and collision with an airport terminal structure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA009
- Event ID
- 20011017X02103
- Case number
- MIA02LA009
- 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: af9f2c7adc4cdbf16951389698ec5f608b6505bd0382db1ea75868c38563a264; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:31:08.208Z.