ANC04FA080 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Talkeetna Airport (PATK) to Merrill Field (PAMR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04FA080
- 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
- 4 · 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
- N4588C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna Airport (PATK), Talkeetna, AKTo Merrill Field (PAMR), Anchorage, AK
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 in flight
- 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
- Stall; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private certificated pilot was returning from a round-robin VFR personal flight with three passengers. The flight was paralleling a rural highway, and was observed by a witness about 30 feet above the trees, southbound on the west side of the highway. The nose of the airplane appeared "slightly up." It then made a smooth right turn, about 180 degrees toward the north, nosed down about 45 degrees, and descended from view into the trees. Another witness reported that she observed the airplane northbound at a low altitude on the west side of the highway. The airplane appeared to be making a right banking turn, and then nosed down toward the trees. The airplane began a 3/4 spiral turn downward and disappeared into the trees. An on-site investigation disclosed that the airplane collided with several trees, and then struck soft ground in about a 45 degree nose down attitude. The cabin floor was oriented about 45 degrees to the right. Numerous broken tree limbs were observed about 50 feet above the impact site. The empennage was separated from the main fuselage about the forward attach point of the vertical stabilizer, and was located about 20 feet north of the main impact site. An examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall while maneuvering, and a collision with trees and terrain during an uncontrolled descent.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04FA080
- Event ID
- 20040727X01073
- Case number
- ANC04FA080
- 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 2004-07-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d214906abc6415ac82c455ef04445131c1f93677a2190596174c760c9649594b; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:24:59.103Z.