SEA97LA173 · Cessna 170
Cessna 170 · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From COUGAR MOUNTAIN, WA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA173
- 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 170
- 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
- N4292V
- Operator
- Robert E. Stone · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From COUGAR MOUNTAIN, WATo 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 · 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, approximately 9 minutes after takeoff, the engine RPM dropped to 800 RPM without a throttle reduction, and would not recover despite the pilot's efforts at corrective action. The pilot made a forced landing over power lines into a soft field. The aircraft's right main landing gear collapsed during the forced landing. The pilot reported that there were 20 gallons of fuel on board at takeoff. On-site and follow-up examinations revealed that the aircraft's left wing fuel tank was empty, that the right wing tank contained 11 to 12 gallons of fuel which was contaminated with about 3 pints of water, and that water was also present in the carburetor. The pilot reported that his preflight actions included checking oil and performing a sump drain.
Probable cause
Inadequate aircraft preflight by the pilot-in-command, and water contamination in the fuel resulting in a loss of engine power. A factor was a power transmission line in the forced landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA173
- Event ID
- 20001208X08515
- Case number
- SEA97LA173
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-07-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 75152ac599d24c7ac21ca060cec3884b16a26b68f7aed3ceda5105d7bd3d915c; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:19:44.334Z.