ERA15CA113 · Cessna 172I
Cessna 172I · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Worcester Regional Airport (ORH) to Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15CA113
- 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 172I
- 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
- N35560
- Operator
- Ronald L. Emond · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Worcester Regional Airport (ORH), Worcester, MATo Nashua Airport / Boire Field (ASH), Nashua, NH
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1968)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight school operator, the solo, student pilot was directed by air traffic control to taxi via taxiway Charlie and the inner ramp to the parking area. A fence construction company truck was parked on the edge of the active taxiway while the personnel inside the truck were having lunch. As the pilot taxied the airplane past the truck, while on the yellow taxi line, the left wing struck the upper cab of the truck. The pilot reported that she did not see the truck prior to the collision and it was parked in the shadow of a building. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector reported that the collision resulted in substantial damage to the left wing. The student pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the airplane at the time of the accident. FAA Advisory Circular 91-73B, which provides guidance on single pilot taxi operations, states, "Situational Awareness (SA). When conducting taxi operations, pilots need to be aware of their proximity to other aircraft and vehicles moving on the airport."
Probable cause
The student pilot's lack of vigilance during taxi, which resulted in a collision with a parked truck. A factor in the accident was the truck operator's decision to park on the edge of an active taxiway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15CA113
- Event ID
- 20150125X85724
- Case number
- ERA15CA113
- 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: 27dac85a5f8fffda207c94da07c468dd75213ad2ace450e72e55aa5e5c9d6350; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:02:54.504Z.