WPR17LA078 · Swearingen SA226 TC
Swearingen SA226 TC · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during initial climb
From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI) to Centennial Airport (KAPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR17LA078
- 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
Swearingen SA226 TC
- Aircraft type
- Swearingen SA226
- 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
- N158WA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boise Air Terminal/Gowen Field (BOI), Boise, IDTo Centennial Airport (KAPA), Denver, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1981)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot reported that he performed a preflight inspection of the airplane before departing on the repositioning flight. The takeoff roll was normal; however, just after the airplane lifted off, he heard a "pop" and felt a vibration. The pilot initially thought that one of the tires had blown, but as the vibration continued, he determined that he might have a problem with one of the propellers. The pilot subsequently returned to the airport and landed without further incident.
When the pilot shut down the left engine after landing, he noticed that the tip of one of the propeller blades was missing. Further examination of the blade revealed that about 4 inches of the blade tip had separated and penetrated the side of the fuselage.
Airport personnel later found additional pieces of propeller blade material on the runway, as well as what appeared to be the blade of a screwdriver and pieces of the handle.
Maintenance personnel reported that a mechanic had been working on the airplane just before the flight and had been called away from the task he was performing before it was completed; the airplane was subsequently returned to service. The mechanic left a screwdriver on the nose of the airplane in the windshield wiper area, in a position that the pilot could not see. It is likely that, during the takeoff roll, the screwdriver became dislodged from the area of the windshield wiper and impacted the left propeller.
Probable cause
Company maintenance personnel's failure to remove a screwdriver that was left lodged in the windshield wiper area of the forward fuselage during maintenance and subsequently became dislodged on takeoff/initial climb and collided with a left propeller blade.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR17LA078
- Event ID
- 20170320X00003
- Case number
- WPR17LA078
- 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: 76a88a86e7907e23fbc11cdec13f7cc932fda6e1fe519d94f103ce5bb15e2ea0; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:06:12.373Z.