ERA14CA314 · Cessna 172L
Cessna 172L · Accident: ground collision while standing
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA314
- 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 172L
- 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
- N7867G
- Operator
- Jao-Shiang Luo
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CTTo Martha's Vineyard Airport (MVY), Vineyard Haven, MA
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1970)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that following preflight inspection of the airplane he attempted to start the engine using the starter but was unable. He indicated this to be, "an on-and-off issue…" in that he had to hand start the engine once during 5 attempts prior to 5 separate flights the previous weekend. He elected to hand start the engine without assistance because he was unable to locate personnel from the fixed base operator, and asked the non-rated passenger seated in the right front seat to apply the aircraft's brakes. With the airplane unsecured and the throttle applied "a little bit", the engine started. Initially the airplane did not move, but then began to move. He attempted to board the airplane but was unable and it began travelling faster. The airplane turned to the left, went between 2 rows of airplanes and impacted several parked unoccupied airplanes.
The pilot further stated that he did not show the passenger how to activate the aircraft's brakes, and believes the passenger may have inadvertently applied left rudder in an attempt to stop the airplane, although the passenger told him he did not recall doing so. There were no injuries to the front or rear seat passengers, and there were no ground injuries.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge contains a section titled, "Hand Propping" which indicates to never allow a person unfamiliar with the controls to occupy the pilot's seat when hand propping. The section also indicates that an additional precaution includes placement of chalks in front of the main tires or if not feasible, the airplane's tail may be securely tied. The excerpts are contained in the NTSB public docket.
Probable cause
The pilot's use of a person unfamiliar with aviation and his failure to properly secure the airplane during hand starting of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA314
- Event ID
- 20140629X12127
- Case number
- ERA14CA314
- 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: 5943c57bcef008091a9d7bfb222bc1f53f0aeb9283a7a31a38f9877b9f4e19d3; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:29:59.288Z.