NYC04LA058 · Cessna U206G
Cessna U206G · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From SKY · Sandusky, OH to Kelleys Island Land Field (89D)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA058
- 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 U206G
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N9940M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From SKY · Sandusky, OHTo Kelleys Island Land Field (89D)
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Passenger › Visual lookout, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Aircraft unattended/engine(s) running, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Upon arriving at the airport, the pilot parked the airplane, and pulled the power back to idle to let two passengers out. The pilot left the engine running because he was planning on conducting another flight. The pilot set the parking brake, and as he exited the airplane, he observed the rear seat passenger exit from the rear baggage door, and walk away from the airplane. The front seat passenger then exited through the pilot's door, and proceeded to his vehicle. While the pilot was boarding a new passenger for another flight, he observed one of the previous passengers return to the airplane, and walk around the right wing strut. The pilot then heard a strange sound, and the engine stopped running. The pilot exited the airplane and observed the passenger lying on the ground after being struck by the propeller. Prior to the 10-minute flight, the passengers "each drank a couple of beers."
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to unload passengers and leave the airplane unattended while the engine was running, and the passenger's inadequate visual lookout, which resulted in an inadvertent encounter with a rotating propeller. A factor related to the accident was the impairment of the passenger due to alcohol.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA058
- Event ID
- 20040129X00127
- Case number
- NYC04LA058
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-01-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e707c892fff6fc801a2a86ad5a694ab54bb3f5583da67a65d6660bee34fda3d8; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:19:37.193Z.