ANC20CA014 · Cessna 172 M
Yokota Aero Club Cessna 172 M · Accident: propeller/jet/rotor blast or suction while taxiing
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC20CA014
- 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 172 M
- 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
- N22905
- Operator
- Yokota Aero Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1974)
- 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 · to runway
- 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
- Propeller/jet/rotor blast or suction
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The operator's operations chief reported that an air traffic controller instructed the flight instructor and pilot to taxi to a taxiway and that, subsequently, the airplane encountered prop wash from a larger airplane on the same taxiway, which flipped the airplane onto its right side and resulted in substantial damage to the forward wing spar. The larger airplane's pilot reported that he was conducting a high-power engine run on the same taxiway. The air traffic controller did not tell the pilots in the smaller airplane at any time while they were taxiing about the larger airplane's intentions. The pilot of the larger airplane reported that all requests for engine start, taxi, and high-power engine runs were coordinated with air traffic control (ATC). He added that they had to reposition due to a tailwind and that he had made a radio call to ATC and acknowledged that they had repositioned on the ramp to face into the wind. He added that he heard the lighter airplane receive a taxi clearance but did not hear any communications questioning the larger airplane's status or position with respect to any potential impact on aircraft taxiing behind them on the taxiway. He became aware of the lighter airplane's situation after the event when its pilot made a radio call to ground control.
Probable cause
The airplane’s encounter with prop wash while taxiing behind a larger airplane that was conducting a high-power engine run on the same taxiway. Contributing to the accident was the air traffic controller’s failure to inform the smaller airplane’s pilot about the larger airplane pilot’s intentions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC20CA014
- Event ID
- 20200114X55301
- Case number
- ANC20CA014
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c207834e29893b4c3dc7818ca0113785ddb5f0788ed17ca45d48d40cb22a2bfb; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:55:47.098Z.