DEN82DA059 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From VIRDEN/MANATOBA to Williston, ND
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN82DA059
- 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
- CFZMZ
- Operator
- Ken Shearer
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From VIRDEN/MANATOBATo Williston, ND
- 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 › Wrong runway, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT NOTED UNFAVORABLE WINDS WHEN HE ARRIVED FOR LANDING. HE ELECTED TO FLY IN THE LOCAL AREA UNTIL THE WINDS SUBSIDED. AFTER FLYING LOCALLY FOR ABOUT ONE HOUR, HE ELECTED TO LAND ON RUNWAY 29 WITH A CROSSWIND FROM 020 DEGREES. WHILE ON DOWNWIND, HE ESTIMATED THAT THE WIND VELOCITY WAS ABOUT 5 KNOTS. THE PILOT STATED THAT AFTER LANDING, WHEN THE AIRCRAFT WAS ALMOST STOPPED, HE SAW SOME DUST AND WIND COMING ACROSS THE GRASS FIELD. THE WIND PICKED UP HIS WING AND HE ATTEMPTED A GO-AROUND WHICH WAS UNSUCCESSFUL. THE AIRCRAFT VEERED OFF THE LEFT SIDE OF THE RUNWAY AND THE PILOT ATTEMPTED TO CLEAR A FENCE. THE TAILWHEEL STRUCK THE FENCE AND THE AIRCRAFT NOSED OVER. REPORTEDLY, PREVAILING WIND VELOCITY WAS 25 GUSTING 40 KNOTS. THE AIRPORT HAD ANOTHER RUNWAY (03/21) THAT WAS 4800 FT LONG.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN82DA059
- Event ID
- 20020917X01946
- Case number
- DEN82DA059
- 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 1982-04-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3a7d56ac0e2b8c44e342d89e817ecb5c34552bce01944410e154c00c1bbc04f6; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:07:17.690Z.