CEN17LA135 · Luscombe 8F E
Luscombe 8F E · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person before flight
From Thrall Lake Airport (7MI3) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA135
- 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
- 1 · 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
Luscombe 8F E
- Aircraft type
- Luscombe 8
- 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
- N2007B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thrall Lake Airport (7MI3), Vicksburg, MITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 69 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was found lying on the ground under the nose of the airplane with a fatal head injury from a propeller strike. Normal engine start for this airplane required hand propping the engine. The airplane was found with the left wheel chocked, and the magneto, throttle control, primer, and fuel tank selector settings as expected for an engine start. It is likely that, during hand propping, the pilot inadvertently entered the path of the propeller. The Federal Aviation Administration advises pilots that hand propping should only be attempted with two properly trained people, and the pilot was alone when he was fatally injured.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent contact with the propeller while hand propping the engine, which resulted in a fatal injury.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA135
- Event ID
- 20170322X15507
- Case number
- CEN17LA135
- 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, damage. 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: 8c48fe74f22841b513f637cce92148c7fad517075d4e94ca65fe6ef25a37eb71; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:00:09.996Z.