ERA13LA075 · Cessna 172F
Cessna 172F · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person while standing
From Stanly County Airport (VUJ) to Stanly County Airport (VUJ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA075
- 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 172F
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 172
- 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
- N8475U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stanly County Airport (VUJ), Albemarle, NCTo Stanly County Airport (VUJ), Albemarle, NC
- 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) operating
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot and flight instructor had landed, parked, and secured the airplane. They returned about 15 minutes later and attempted to restart the airplane but were unable to do so. An external battery supply was connected to the airplane by the owner of the flight school, and at that time of the engine start, the student was located behind the airplane. After the engine was started, the instructor allowed the engine to idle for about 1 minute while the external power supply was removed by the owner. Neither the owner nor the instructor observed the student walk from the rear of the airplane to the front until the airplane's engine made an unusual sound, and they then noticed the student running from the front of the airplane. The student pilot sustained a serious injury to his left arm.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to remain clear of the airplane’s rotating propeller.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA075
- Event ID
- 20121204X61012
- Case number
- ERA13LA075
- 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: f47f388cd0e6a6fca0dc850083705bb93b546e4d110c7ef722f8d46774623cb0; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:31:16.057Z.