LAX05LA073 · Cessna 172SP
Angel Air Cessna 172SP · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ) to Stellar Airpark (P19)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA073
- 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
- 1 · 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 172SP
- 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
- N2157H
- Operator
- Angel Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ), Casa Grande, AZTo Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZ
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Propeller/jet blast encounter, inadvertent
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 sustained fatal injuries when he came into contact with the rotating propeller of his airplane prior to departing for a night flight. There were no known witnesses to the accident. According to information generated during investigations by law enforcement personnel and Safety Board investigators, the pilot started his airplane, and taxied toward the runway. For unknown reasons, the pilot apparently stopped on the taxiway and exited the airplane with the engine still operating, the parking brake set, and with the landing and taxi lights illuminated. He moved toward the front of the airplane with a flashlight in hand, and contacted the rotating propeller. The pilot was beginning the flight after a full day of work and after being awake for at least 16.5 hours.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent encounter with a rotating propeller. Contributing factors were the dark night conditions and the pilot's fatigued condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA073
- Event ID
- 20050224X00224
- Case number
- LAX05LA073
- 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, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-01-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a64caa77d54e5036cb3063fc4543d0039e2d2b1dc2b531e0b5d458c51db41740; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:08:20.574Z.