ERA15CA095 · Cessna A185E
Cessna A185E · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
From Oxford County Regional Airport (81B) to Rutland - Southern Vermont Regional Airport (RUT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA095
- 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 A185E
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 185
- 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
- N70037
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oxford County Regional Airport (81B), Lewiston, METo Rutland - Southern Vermont Regional Airport (RUT), Rutland, VT
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1971)
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 stated that while preparing for the flight, he initiated the engine starting procedure. This procedure included steps to advance the throttle and engage the electric fuel pump, in order to prime the fuel system. A subsequent step required that the throttle setting be reduced to idle position before engaging the starter motor. The pilot stated that for this step, he unintentionally pulled the propeller control out instead of the throttle control, and when he engaged the starter, the engine started and immediately went to full RPM. The airplane then travelled across the ramp and struck two parked airplanes, resulting in substantial damage to the airplane's left elevator. The airplane then went through an opening in a snowbank and came to rest about 150 yards from where it initially started. The pilot did not report any preexisting mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly set the throttle prior to engine start, which resulted in a loss of control and collision with parked airplanes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA095
- Event ID
- 20150108X54748
- Case number
- ERA15CA095
- 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: 4249555eb76ba41418d76058dd5d635755ef7bffc672163e9abf698c7f08d730; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:01:22.043Z.