WPR12LA085 · Piper PA-28R-200
Piper PA-28R-200 · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person while standing
From Gillespie Field (SEE) to Gillespie Field (SEE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA085
- 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
Piper PA-28R-200
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-28
- 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
- N746R
- Operator
- Woodard Gordon
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gillespie Field (SEE), San Diego, CATo Gillespie Field (SEE), San Diego, 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
- Aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger reported that he and the pilot were both seated in the airplane when the pilot made three unsuccessful attempts to start the engine. The pilot told the passenger to “get out, I need to jump it.” The passenger got out of the airplane and was walking away when he heard a noise. When he looked back toward the front of the airplane, he saw the pilot lying on the ground below the propeller. The airplane’s engine was not running. Postaccident examination revealed that the magneto switch was in the both position. It is likely that the pilot moved the propeller, and because the magnetos were in a ready-to-start condition, this resulted in a spark plug firing, which caused the propeller to turn rapidly and strike the pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to turn the magneto switch to the off position before moving the propeller to start the engine by hand.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA085
- Event ID
- 20120130X33824
- Case number
- WPR12LA085
- 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: 3aa9529c2541cc394f3a1b44bbb122698bd20f9d8fb7016cdce45509bdf7397f; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:09:18.761Z.