SEA96LA037 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From S67 · Nampa, ID to Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA037
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 170B
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 170
- 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
- N2761D
- Operator
- Wayne J. Calkin · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S67 · Nampa, IDTo Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE), OR
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Evasive maneuver, performed
- Pilot in command › Lift-off, premature
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he encountered deteriorating weather while approaching his destination and elected to land on a public highway, and that the accident occurred during landing. However, a county sheriff's report indicated that the pilot told law enforcement personnel that he had landed on the highway earlier due to deteriorating weather and was attempting to take off again from the highway. The pilot told law enforcement personnel that during the takeoff, a motor vehicle rounded a corner in the road and that he pulled up to avoid it, but that 'The plane wasn't ready to get airborne.' The sheriff's report stated that after pulling up, the airplane touched down several times before impacting a bank along the side of the road. Statements from the vehicle driver and a local resident who lives along the highway supported the sequence of events given in the sheriff's report.
Probable cause
the pilot's premature lift-off and inadequate airspeed following liftoff. His use of a public highway as a takeoff area, and a motor vehicle on the highway, were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA037
- Event ID
- 20001208X05199
- Case number
- SEA96LA037
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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 local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d641db57fd693984fe1a3e43218924c233d5ff925a19b2b6d6a0a34fd5943553; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:54:57.750Z.