WPR11LA416 · Luscombe 8 A
Luscombe 8 A · Accident while standing
From Paradise Skypark Airport (CA92) to Paradise Skypark Airport (CA92)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA416
- 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
Luscombe 8 A
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N45725
- Operator
- Earl J Hodges · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Paradise Skypark Airport (CA92), Paradise, CATo Paradise Skypark Airport (CA92), Paradise, 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
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the passenger was turning the propeller by hand to start the engine (hand-propping) when the engine “kicked back.” The passenger lost his balance, slipped, and fell to the pavement, striking his head. The pilot stated that after the fall the passenger said that he felt fine and that, en route to their destination, the passenger talked as he normally did. The pilot learned that, two days after the passenger suffered the fall, his wife had him admitted to the local hospital and that, the following day, the passenger had succumbed to what the local medical examiner described as a subdural hematoma as a result of an accidental fall.
Probable cause
The passenger's accidental fall while turning the propeller by hand to start the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA416
- Event ID
- 20110830X31855
- Case number
- WPR11LA416
- 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, 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: 42b6aed049aacd34c0024108e2945c5b589a3b6bca86691a28acba8e1a6aea9f; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:46:38.187Z.