DFW08CA071 · Cessna 172S
Cessna 172S · Incident while standing
From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) to Unknown
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08CA071
- 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
- Incident
- 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 172S
- 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
- N53564
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Bergstrom International Airport (AUS), Austin, TXTo Unknown
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot/registered owner was standing on the ramp in his single-engine airplane with the engine running and the parking brake set. As the pilot was preparing to taxi, he dropped something on the floor. When he realized he could not reach the object, he moved his seat back so he could reach down to the floor. At that point, he felt motion and realized that he could not reach the brake pedals. Before the pilot could release his seatbelt and turn off the engine, the airplane struck two parked airplanes, resulting in minor damage to his airplane and one of the parked airplanes. However, the other parked airplane sustained substantial damage to the rudder, elevator, and horizontal stabilizer.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while parked on the ramp with the engine running.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08CA071
- Event ID
- 20080306X00277
- Case number
- DFW08CA071
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: e634a36c43a442472cb507187aede2c9378b75aa66340a463f44eeb992353acc; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:24:46.821Z.