CHI85FEM02 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Fruitport, MI to Grand Haven Memorial Airpark (3GM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI85FEM02
- 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
- N4169U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fruitport, MITo Grand Haven Memorial Airpark (3GM), Grand Haven, MI
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft handling, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Panic
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS DESTROYED DURING A PRECAUTIONARY LANDING AFTER THE LEFT SIDE OF THE ENG COWLING OPENED SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF. THE PLT REPORTED THE COWLING OPENED AT AN ALT OF APRX 50 FT AGL. A CLIMB TO 300 FT WAS MADE AND THE ACFT WAS TURNED ONTO DOWNWIND. THE PLT STATED IN AN INTERVIEW THAT BECAUSE OF TURBULENCE AND A FEAR THE COWLING WOULD SEPARATE FROM THE ACFT, HE PANICKED AND TRIED TO PUT THE ACFT DOWN IN AN OPEN FLD. THE ACFT CONTACTED THE TERRAIN IN A NOSE DOWN LEFT BANK ATTITUDE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI85FEM02
- Event ID
- 20001214X37732
- Case number
- CHI85FEM02
- 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: 2dc4ab9da0bf393443ce626e9eab559ed517602dda08cd549642f4f0c28983db; retrieved 2026-09-22T01:40:40.810Z.