ATL97LA083 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From SC (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA083
- 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 170A
- 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
- N2551V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From SC (private airstrip)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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the passenger, she reported that her eyes were closed during the take off and she only opened her eyes when she felt they were airborne. She stated that she opened her eyes when the airplane was above the trees and 'heard something hitting the aircraft multiple times' and 'realized that they were losing power and descending. She was then jolted forward in her seat and could feel the aircraft continue to descend until impact with the ground. According to the pilot, he has no recollection of the flight subsequent to initiating the takeoff roll. The FAA inspector stated, the aircraft 'stalled and came to rest in a heavily wooded, swampy area, a few hundred yards northeast of the grass strip'. There were no engine, or aircraft mechanical malfunctions reported by the pilot, or discovered during the wreckage examination. The weather data suggested conditions were favorable for the formation of carburetor ice.
Probable cause
The pilot experienced a partial loss of engine power for undetermined reason. The pilot failed to maintain flying airspeed which resulted in a stall and then subsequent collision with the ground. A factor was, conditions were favorable for the formation of carburetor ice.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA083
- Event ID
- 20001208X08057
- Case number
- ATL97LA083
- 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: 7abbb82bc60a809e760bf8db78947071b6acc6d204fd77cbb97254de133f6ff8; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:03:07.636Z.