CEN23LA186 · Beech F33A
Beech F33A · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person while standing
From Tahlequah Municipal Airport (TQH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA186
- 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
Beech F33A
- Aircraft type
- Beechcraft 33
- 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
- N2294L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tahlequah Municipal Airport (TQH), Tahlequah, OKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
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 stated that after he started the airplane engine, he realized that the wheel chocks were still in place on the nose landing gear tire. He set the parking brake and exited the airplane with the engine still running. As the pilot removed the chocks, they inadvertently hit the propeller and pulled his arm into the propeller arc. The pilot sustained a serious injury to his right arm.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane sustained minor damage to the propeller.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to remove the wheel chocks before engine start which resulted in the inadvertent contact with the propeller while the engine was running.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA186
- Event ID
- 20230516174540
- Case number
- CEN23LA186
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: ca169f241b2159b12c13e5ccc4fcb9bcdf01841d62930471b4e8eaf2b5fd25df; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:36:45.111Z.