ANC08CA017 · Cessna 172
Cessna 172 · Accident: propeller blast or jet exhaust/suction while taxiing
From Nashville International Airport (KBNA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08CA017
- 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 172
- 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
- N5555R
- Operator
- Merlin G. Grigsby · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nashville International Airport (KBNA), Nashville, TNTo not recorded
- 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 · to 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
- Pilot in command › Propeller/jet blast encounter, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private certificated pilot was cleared to taxi for takeoff and was proceeding toward the departure runway in a light, single-engine airplane. The pilot saw a four-engine military C-130 turboprop airplane that appeared to be doing an engine run-up, about 300 feet to the left of his taxiway. In the Pilot/Operator Aircraft Accident Report (NTSB Form 6120.1) submitted by the pilot, the pilot reported, "I stopped short, and contacted Nashville ground 121.9, stating that I request further taxi instructions since a C-130 is running engines with exhaust blast toward me." The controller stated "...proceed your discretion." The pilot continued to taxi behind the C-130, and his airplane was struck by the propwash. The pilot's airplane was blown sideways and overturned. Paragraph 11, Jet Engine Exhaust, of the FAA's Advisory Circular AC 90-23F Aircraft Wake Turbulence, notes that light aircraft need to maintain adequate separation from jet engine blast during ground operations.
Probable cause
A propwash encounter during taxi from a four-engine airplane that overturned the pilot's single-engine airplane when he elected to taxi across the larger airplane's propwash.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08CA017
- Event ID
- 20071226X01990
- Case number
- ANC08CA017
- 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: 8e5ff8a57697086276c04efcabfafa7b7e22342964a06264dcb41aef9d8f9329; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:17:39.777Z.