MIA05CA032 · Cessna 172B
Cessna 172B · Accident: on ground/water collision with object
From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH) to Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA05CA032
- 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 172B Possible conflict
- 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
- N7493X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Zephyrhills Municipal Airport (ZPH), Zephyrhills, FLTo Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FL
- 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
- Other
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Brakes(normal), not set
- Pilot in command › Starting procedure, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after refueling the airplane embarked and tried to start the airplane, and said that it would not start. He said he turned off the magneto switch, set the brakes, got out the airplane, and tried starting it by hand several times, but it would not start. After a brief distraction he said that when he again moved the propeller, all of a sudden the engine started operating immediately. He said the airplane moved forward and was heading toward the fuel tank, so he ran after it and grabbed the left strut to keep it from hitting the tank. He said the airplane proceeded between the fuel tank and the credit card machine, knocking him to the ground, and continued on, impacted two parked airplanes and two chain linked fences before stopping.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to set the parking brake and his improper starting procedure which resulted in an unattended aircraft running away after hand starting the engine and the airplane colliding with parked airplanes, incurring substantial damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA05CA032
- Event ID
- 20050111X00031
- Case number
- MIA05CA032
- 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: 7428dbf2da83aeaf53c8d7a448d13a35e988691365ecdc65451a915a92f4a44b; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:10:49.325Z.