ERA13LA311 · Cessna 172M
Altitude Addiction Cessna 172M · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV) to Skyhaven Airport (DAW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA311
- 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 172M
- 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
- N61947
- Operator
- Altitude Addiction
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV), Burlington, VTTo Skyhaven Airport (DAW), Rochester, NH
- 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 · to runway
- 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
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after contacting ground control and receiving a taxi clearance, he taxied to the end of the exit ramp and then began to taxi the airplane to the departure runway by attempting to follow the airport signs. He turned right and subsequently realized that the airplane was on an airport access road instead of a taxiway. The airplane struck a fence to the right of the access road, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing. Photographs provided by the airport showed no "No Entry Signs" in the vicinity of the airport access road. Although the airport operated under a Part 139 certificate, it did not have signage along the access road indicating that entry was prohibited for aircraft recommended in federal guidance for Part 139 airports. The lack of proper signage resulted in the pilot taxiing the airplane down the access road instead of a taxiway.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper turn down an airport access road while attempting to taxi to a runway. Contributing to the accident was the airport management's failure to install proper signage indicating that an airport access road was prohibited to aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA311
- Event ID
- 20130702X52525
- Case number
- ERA13LA311
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2773e276ca0e40e82647ef7fb8dfa9529af2eeeff094212e2da19e539f4c7b0c; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:04:09.630Z.