SEA01LA035 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From ORS to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA035
- 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
- N1703D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ORSTo 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
- Approach
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Carburetor heat, not used
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who had not ascertained the temperature-dew point spread prior to departure, took off for a local personal pleasure flight in conditions that were conducive to serious carburetor icing at climb, cruise, or glide power. During the 10 minutes that he flew around the local area with the engine at a full-rich cruise power setting, he did not activate the carburetor heat in order to check for ice accumulation in the carburetor throat. When he returned to the airport to enter the VFR pattern, he reduced the throttle to idle at the same time as he applied the carburetor heat. After he turned final and pushed the throttle forward to add power, he discovered that the engine had quit. A post-accident teardown inspection of the engine and carburetor established that there was fuel present in those systems, and that there was no evidence of any malfunction or anomaly that would have contributed to a loss of power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to use carburetor heat prior to reducing engine power to idle while operating in serious carburetor icing conditions. Factors include serious carburetor icing conditions, and trees in the area where the pilot found it necessary to attempt a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA035
- Event ID
- 20010210X00433
- Case number
- SEA01LA035
- 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: 46bea40309a1d6efe2a776455bf4aa1e242221afe1bcf6dd4554aac89d6acc7c; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:17:11.234Z.