LAX02LA245 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Mogollon Airpark (AZ82) to St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA245
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 170B
- 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
- N2233D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mogollon Airpark (AZ82), OVERGAARD, AZTo St Johns Industrial Air Park (SJN), St. Johns, AZ
- 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
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot attempted to make a three-point touchdown with a known crosswind and the airplane ground looped, veered off the runway, and collided with an airport boundary fence. Just after touchdown on runway 14, a ground loop commenced, and the airplane veered to the right. Left brake and rudder were applied in order to regain control, whereupon the airplane ran off the east side of the runway. The pilot decided to abort the landing and applied full power in an attempt to get the airplane airborne and under control, but the left wingtip contacted the ground. The airplane then struck a fence, impacted the ground, nosed over, and came to rest inverted. The automated surface observation system (ASOS) was reporting winds from 240 at 11 knots about 20 minutes after the accident. Runway 21 was available at the airport for the landing.
Probable cause
the pilot's selection of the wrong runway for the existing crosswind condition and his subsequent inadequate compensation for the winds, which led to a failure to maintain directional control and a ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA245
- Event ID
- 20020806X01310
- Case number
- LAX02LA245
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2270cb8f7dc95b180bf4253c94dbff019a61c0dc3318cc1f9ec7e5b5b2580966; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:37:39.986Z.