LAX04LA245 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Sutter County Airport (O52) to Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04LA245
- 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
- N2915D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sutter County Airport (O52), Yuba City, CATo Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), Auburn, CA
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane veered off the runway and ground looped during the landing roll while the pilot was attempting to execute a three-point landing. The airplane touched down near the approach end of the runway directly over the runway centerline. During the transition to the landing roll, the airplane began to veer from the centerline, following the natural contours and incline of the runway. The airplane continued to veer to the right and departed the runway surface. The right main landing gear contacted a runway light fixture and the airplane ground looped. During the ground loop, the left main landing gear impacted an embankment, resulting in the left wing contacting the ground. The airplane incurred damage to the left elevator, wing tip, and landing gear. The pilot said there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane, which resulted in an inadvertent ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04LA245
- Event ID
- 20040708X00930
- Case number
- LAX04LA245
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-06-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d9c22a1fa34c16f28822e4499e95869df38b869e929f7f746c26e5ccd0952fcd; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:24:58.965Z.