FTW97LA372 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From F29 to OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA372
- 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
- N10433
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F29To OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the landing roll in a right crosswind, the tailwheel airplane had slowed to 25 mph when it veered to the right and groundlooped. There was a hard shimmy and vibration, and the airplane turned 110 degrees at which point the left main wheel and axle separated from the airframe. The pilot had one hour in the make and model of aircraft. The FAA airworthiness inspector found that the threads from the 'top two nuts and one lower nut were stripped from their bolts holding the axle on the landing gear.' The last annual inspection was performed on 9/1/97. The FAA airworthiness inspector stated that the 'appearance of the aircraft is a generally neglected condition, with worn door hinges, poor operating door latches, fogged instrument glass, and corrosion in plain view.' Maintenance records were not submitted to the Safety Board for review.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the crosswind conditions resulting in an inadvertent groundloop. Factors were the crosswind, the pilot's lack of total experience in make and model, the separation of the left main wheel due to corroded bolts, and the inadequate annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA372
- Event ID
- 20001208X08864
- Case number
- FTW97LA372
- 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: 7a9e9cd767c27b0fcb32a64e4c402b7a8f9f1f1b8ccf47cb2a68570e96a39341; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:29:24.588Z.