CEN12CA396 · Piper PA-28-161
Piper PA-28-161 · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Porter County Municipal Airport (KVPZ) to Porter County Municipal Airport (KVPZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA396
- 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
Piper PA-28-161
- 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
- N6183H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porter County Municipal Airport (KVPZ), Valparaiso, INTo Porter County Municipal Airport (KVPZ), Valparaiso, IN
- 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
The pilot was taxiing the airplane on the ramp and was turning the airplane to park. The pilot added power to complete the turn; however, he was not able to stop quickly enough after the turn was completed, and the airplane hit a nearby parked sport utility vehicle. The left wing spar was bent and the firewall was wrinkled. No preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures were found that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to stop the airplane while taxiing to park, which resulted in a collision with a parked vehicle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA396
- Event ID
- 20120627X20651
- Case number
- CEN12CA396
- 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: db324136b1033757f5d0c4c7a52e530bcdbd3ba94652664e0ece87e5214da6cf; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:38:34.838Z.