SEA97LA053 · Cessna 170B
General aviation Cessna 170B · Accident: nose over during landing
From Ed Carlson Memorial Field South Lewis County Airport (TDO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA053
- 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
- Visual 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
- N4590C
- Operator
- General Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ed Carlson Memorial Field South Lewis County Airport (TDO)To not recorded
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Nose over
- 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 › Brakes(normal), excessive
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While landing in a right crosswind, the right wing of the aircraft came up during the landing flare/touchdown. The pilot was unable to get the wing to come back down, and he therefore applied the brakes in an effort to maintain directional control. Because his braking became excessive, the tailwheel-equipped aircraft nosed over on the runway. The pilot reported that he did not use full aileron deflection in his attempt to get the wing to come down because he was afraid he might overcontrol.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive application of the brakes on a tailwheel equipped aircraft. Factors include the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions, and a crosswind blowing at the time of the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA053
- Event ID
- 20001208X07366
- Case number
- SEA97LA053
- 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: fc3ef06547095633e8116ba0c033a14b16227610cd681dc5f5812d48527a5eb7; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:26:07.090Z.