CEN21LA083 · Cessna 172 S
South Dakota State University Cessna 172 S · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person while standing
From an unrecorded airport to Brookings Regional Airport (BKX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA083
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 S
- 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
- N1956V
- Operator
- South Dakota State University
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Brookings Regional Airport (BKX), Brookings, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2005)
- 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) operating
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a fuel stop as part of a solo cross-country flight. The pilot’s mother and sister had come out to the airport to visit. After fueling the airplane, his mother and sister returned to their car. The pilot conducted his preflight, started the engine, and was completing the checklist when he “heard and felt a violent thud.” He looked up to see his mother “sprinting towards the car.” The pilot shutdown the airplane. The pilot’s mother had returned to the airplane unexpectedly and was struck by the propeller resulting in a serious injury to her left arm. The airplane exhibited no obvious damage.
Probable cause
A bystander’s inadvertent contact with the propeller while the engine was running.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA083
- Event ID
- 20201210102398
- Case number
- CEN21LA083
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-12-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a85ea31e90636a2afa98c76aed7efdb84b164ec0834d26a85b143d892e633e06; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:28:49.358Z.