WPR10LA352 · Beech A36
Connelly Equipment Rental Beech A36 · Accident: ground handling event before flight
From Las Vegas, NV to Gillespie Field (SEE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA352
- 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
Beech A36
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 36
- 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
- N4153Q
- Operator
- Connelly Equipment Rental
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Las Vegas, NVTo Gillespie Field (SEE), El Cajon, CA
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Ground handling event
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger reported that after loading the baggage, she and the pilot got into the airplane and the pilot attempted to start the engine. According to the passenger, the engine would not start and described it as running rough. When the engine finally started, the pilot attempted to move the airplane forward but realized the wheel chocks were still securing it. The passenger offered to help and exited the airplane. Without receiving instruction, she crawled under the right wing and forward to the right side of the nose of the airplane. As she leaned in to remove the chocks, the propeller struck her. After a Federal Aviation Administration inspector described a preflight inspection to the passenger, she stated that she could not recall seeing the pilot ever perform this action. The pilot reported that after he realized the chocks were still securing the airplane he did not want to shut down the engine due to the high outside air temperature. In the recommendation section of the National Transportation Safety Board 6120.1 form, the pilot stated that the accident could have been prevented by not allowing the passenger to exit the airplane while the engine was running.
Probable cause
The passenger's failure to maintain clearance from a turning propeller. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA352
- Event ID
- 20100715X04443
- Case number
- WPR10LA352
- 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, damage. 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: ec80591bad1637ac70a3fea02b5c20b2efc63f0fd4ae9330591c2cdbc90eb495; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:41:57.625Z.