CEN12CA084 · Cessna 550
PWS Air Cessna 550 · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Teterboro Airport (TEB) to Quad City International Airport (MLI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA084
- 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 550
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 550
- 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
- N544PS
- Operator
- PWS Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Teterboro Airport (TEB), Teterboro, NJTo Quad City International Airport (MLI), Moline, IL
- 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
- 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 collision
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing at night, the pilot was taxiing the airplane on a ramp with the airplane's taxi lights illuminated and was paying attention to the ramp marshaller. The pilot originally thought the marshaller would have him park in the position directly next to the fixed base operator; however, the marshaller had the pilot execute a left 180-degree turn and park with the cabin door facing the door of the building. While watching the marshaller outside the right cockpit window, the pilot lost sight of a parked, unoccupied airplane. The pilot then noticed the parked airplane and attempted to stop; however, the airplane's left wing contacted the parked airplane's forward fuselage and nose landing gear. A postaccident examination of the accident airplane showed that the left wing was crushed and bent. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies with the airplane prior to the contact with the parked airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the parked, unoccupied airplane while taxiing. Contributing to the accident was the guidance provided by the marshaller.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA084
- Event ID
- 20111128X54402
- Case number
- CEN12CA084
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-11-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a6344f7771630e2e2dfa758e66305e26e6acb50c86e6d6b8585563aad61b0c59; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:57:54.491Z.