DEN90LA136 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From 44U to 44U
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN90LA136
- 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
- N9086A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 44UTo 44U
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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, water › Not removed
- Fuel system › Contamination
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING INITIAL CLIMB AT 100 FEET ABOVE GROUND LEVEL, THE ENIGNE LOST POWER DUE TO CONTAMINATED FUEL. THE AIRPLANE LANDED STRAIGHT AHEAD ON THE REMAINING RUNWAY, OVER RAN THE RUNWAY, AND STRUCK THE ROUGH UNEVEN TERRAIN BEYOND THE RUNWAY. THE LEFT MAIN LANDING GEAR WAS TORN OFF AND THE LEFT WING WAS DAMAGED IN THE COLLISION WITH THE TERRAIN. DURING A POSTACCIDENT INSPECTION, MORE THAN A PINT OF WATER WAS DRAINED FROM THE GASCOLATOR AND FUEL TANKS.
Probable cause
POWER LOSS AS A RESULT OF WATER CONTAMINATED FUEL. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: AN INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT INSPECTION BY THE PILOT, AND ROUGH TERRAIN ENCOUNTERED DURING THE GROUND RUN, FOLLOWING THE FORCED LANDING.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN90LA136
- Event ID
- 20001212X23392
- Case number
- DEN90LA136
- 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 1990-06-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: aaad50b24acf93c62b5169db123a27d191a4c9749482e1e455d76ba82aeee245; retrieved 2026-09-23T05:53:14.645Z.