WPR10CA206 · Cessna 150L
Cessna 150L · Accident while standing
From Prineville Airport (S39) to Prineville Airport (S39)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA206
- 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 150L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 150
- 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
- N6928G
- Operator
- David L Dow · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prineville Airport (S39), Princeville, ORTo Prineville Airport (S39), Princeville, OR
- 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) start-up
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After preflight, the pilot set the parking brake, primed the engine, and got out to hand-start the engine with the propeller. No one was on board to help hold the brakes. He turned the propeller, and the engine started. He entered the cabin, and placed his feet on the rudder pedals. The engine stopped, so he exited the airplane and hand-propped it again. The engine started and air from the propeller blew the entry door shut. The airplane started to move forward and he was not able to reenter the airplane to apply the brakes. The left wing collided with a hangar about 100 feet away, which spun the nose into the hangar. The left wing was pushed back into the fuselage, and both sustained substantial damage. The pilot said that he did not recheck the parking brake after placing his feet on the controls, and thought that the accident might have been prevented if he had gone back to step one of his hand-start checklist.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that the parking brake was set prior to hand-starting the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA206
- Event ID
- 20100415X21730
- Case number
- WPR10CA206
- 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. 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: 62f6f86e8a12b5792ae4b0667baa8aece84dbb38a0ef8765d9f1682722f0b3c5; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:51:59.645Z.