CEN15CA410 · Piper PA-17
Piper PA-17 · Accident: ground handling event while standing
From I19 · Delphi, IN to I19 · Delphi, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15CA410
- 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
Piper PA-17
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-17
- 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
- N4653H
- Operator
- Eric D. Stull · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From I19 · Delphi, INTo I19 · Delphi, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1948)
- 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 handling event
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had recently purchased the airplane. It was not equipped with a starter nor did it have a parking brake. Up until this time, the pilot had used someone else to hand prop the engine while he sat at the controls. This was the pilot's first attempt to start the engine by himself. The airplane was not tied down nor chocked. The engine started and the airplane taxied across the tarmac and collided with an airport-owned hangar. There was an intention for flight. The pilot admitted his "lack of experience with this aircraft and [his] overly-high confidence level [was the cause of the] accident."
Probable cause
The pilot's attempt to start the engine by himself without properly securing the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15CA410
- Event ID
- 20150914X05723
- Case number
- CEN15CA410
- 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: af968cf1c1ff115b98ba50c3e4c7217fd3a3786414a550d8c66f0a8eaeb50224; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:46:07.681Z.