LAX04LA184 · Grumman American AA-5B
Grumman American AA-5B · Accident: propeller blast or jet exhaust/suction while taxiing
From Columbia Airport (O22) to Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA184
- 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
Grumman American AA-5B
- Aircraft type
- Grumman American AA-5
- 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
- N74270
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Airport (O22), Columbia, CATo Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CA
- 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
- Propeller/jet blast encounter
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane encountered jet blast from a executive jet transport Bombardier BD-700 Global Express, while taxing to parking. After making an uneventful landing, the pilot taxied off the runway and established communications with ground control. The controller cleared him to taxi to his requested destination, and about 30 seconds later the Global Express jet, which was parked on a FBO ramp with its tail pointed to the taxiway, called ground control and said they were ready to taxi. The ground controller cleared the Global Express to taxi behind the Grumman to the active runway. As the Grumman taxied past the Global Express' parking spot, the jet's engines began to spool up, resulting in a jet blast toward the right side of the Grumman. The Grumman swerved uncontrollably, and the left axle sheared off. The controller did not advise the Grumman of the potential jet blast hazard he could encounter while taxiing behind the Global Express. The Global Express was parked about 100 yards to the east of the tower with nothing impeding line of sight between the two.
Probable cause
the pilot's encounter with jet blast effects. Factors in the accident were the pilots' inadequate situational awareness of the potential for the jet blast encounter after hearing the Global Express airplane on the frequency call ready for taxi, and, the ground controller's failure to issue a safety advisory.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA184
- Event ID
- 20040511X00592
- Case number
- LAX04LA184
- 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: cad94fe37f0aaaa1e45300832dd54dff83acafb016c47d881f2e2ee60764fc62; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:45:33.000Z.