IAD04LA003 · Cessna C172R
Cessna C172R · Accident: propeller blast or jet exhaust/suction while taxiing
From Blue Grass Airport (LEX) to Blue Grass Airport (LEX)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04LA003
- 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 C172R
- 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
- N9968F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Blue Grass Airport (LEX), Lexington, KYTo Blue Grass Airport (LEX), Lexington, KY
- 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
- 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
- Atc personnel(lcl/gnd/clnc) › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not advised
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The ground controller cleared regional jet mechanics to perform a static engine run at the gate, and advised that she would "take the Cessna up to a different intersection." She also cautioned another crew about the run-up; however, she did not mention the runup in her position relief briefing. The pilot of the accident airplane subsequently requested clearance to taxi, and the new ground controller granted the clearance without providing information about the regional jet's engine run-up. When the accident airplane passed about 300 feet behind the regional jet, it was blown sideways, struck its left wing on the ground, tipped onto its nose, and pivoted 180 degrees. The airplane continued to be buffeted until the mechanics were advised to cease the engine run-up. Federal Aviation Administration Order 7110.65P included a standard operating procedure about transferring position responsibility, which stated, "the specialist being relieved shall be responsible for ensuring that any pertinent status information of which he/she is aware is relayed to the relieving specialist..."
Probable cause
The ground controller's failure to advise the relieving controller information regarding an engine run-up, which subsequently resulted in the flight instructor's inadvertent encounter with jet blast during ground taxi.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04LA003
- Event ID
- 20031209X02014
- Case number
- IAD04LA003
- 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: a079b5ddf7e7a230202d9c8d2abb20bcd2df09fff404170b739702bc8e69a826; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:07:22.368Z.