LAX02LA274 · Cessna 172I
Arizona Aero-Tech Cessna 172I · Accident: propeller blast or jet exhaust/suction while taxiing
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA274
- 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 172I
- 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
- N404SW
- Operator
- Arizona Aero-Tech
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZTo 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 · from 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The right wing impacted the pavement after encountering jet blast from a transport category airplane taxiing onto a runway. The accident airplane had been instructed by ground control to taxi along a route that placed it behind a Boeing 737, which was holding short of the runway for a takeoff clearance. The certified flight instructor (CFI) directed his student to taxi as far to the right side of the 75-foot-wide taxiway as possible to avoid the jet blast of the Boeing 737. As their airplane passed behind the jet, the Boeing spooled up its engines and proceeded onto the runway for takeoff. The CFI and student were on the ground controller's frequency, and were not aware that the jet had been cleared for takeoff by the local controller on tower frequency. Controllers issued no safety alerts or cautionary advisories as instructed by Air Traffic Control Order 7110.65N, 3-1-4. The airplane's left wing rose into the air while the right impacted the pavement twice. The propeller also struck the pavement. Ground scars and a paint streak were near the right edge and outside of the taxiway boundary line.
Probable cause
the certified flight instructor's failure to maintain an adequate distance from a jet during taxi. A factor was the local/ground controller's failure to issue a safety alert or cautionary advisory to the pilot with regards to the jet blast of the departing Boeing 737.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA274
- Event ID
- 20020913X01599
- Case number
- LAX02LA274
- 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, coordinates. 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: d533940894b4d5866081792999aed994ab829e02df2f9c5299ac905c7619ed98; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:21:48.923Z.