WPR24LA099 · Piper PA-18A 150
Piper PA-18A 150 · Accident: aircraft/propeller/rotor contact with person before flight
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA099
- 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
Piper PA-18A 150
- Aircraft type
- Piper PA-18
- 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
- N518SW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1955)
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was preparing to fly the airplane with a new propeller that had been recently installed. During a few recent experiences, the propeller would get stuck at top dead center and would only turn normally after multiple start attempts. On the day of the accident, the propeller was stuck at top dead center again after an unsuccessful attempt to start the engine. The pilot walked to the front of the airplane and stood on one of the floats to reposition the propeller, at which time the engine started up immediately and the pilot was struck by one of the propeller blades. According to the airport manager who arrived several minutes after the accident, he observed the ignition switch in the ON position. The pilot further remarked that he must have forgotten to turn off the magnetos before he moved the propeller. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that could have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to disengage the ignition prior to moving the propeller by hand resulting in the inadvertent starting of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA099
- Event ID
- 20240304193877
- Case number
- WPR24LA099
- 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, 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: deaf024fa77940c2e8be03320c70e702fa2325b9e38345de48faff9ea6b5ba18; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:33:39.382Z.