CEN13CA282 · Cessna 172RG
Omega Protein Cessna 172RG · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
From Abbeville Chris Crusta Memorial Airport (IYA) to Abbeville Chris Crusta Memorial Airport (IYA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13CA282
- 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 172RG
- 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
- N5219U
- Operator
- Omega Protein
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abbeville Chris Crusta Memorial Airport (IYA), Abbeville, LATo Abbeville Chris Crusta Memorial Airport (IYA), Abbeville, LA
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane's engine battery was dead so the pilot elected to hand-prop the engine. He tied the tail of the airplane down via a brass snap-hook that attached to a metal fastener underneath the airplane's tail section. The snap-hook was attached to a rope that was secured to the ground. The pilot set the parking brake and checked the throttle position; however, he did not secure the wheels with chocks. The engine started on the third attempt and RPM increased as the pilot walked back toward the cockpit. Before he got there, the brass snap-hook broke and the airplane began to roll forward. The pilot was unable to access the cockpit and the airplane traveled unattended until it collided with a parked airplane resulting in substantial damage to the right wing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly secure the airplane before hand starting the engine and the failure of the brass tie down hook.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13CA282
- Event ID
- 20130516X72237
- Case number
- CEN13CA282
- 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: 0f172983a86eed575fc90e75115ab993d8d17fe405264403652bdc3451389949; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:34:50.909Z.