ANC08CA121 · Cessna 170
Cessna 170 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From North Pole, AK to Ruby, AK
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC08CA121
- 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 170
- 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
- N2690V
- Operator
- Zesiger Wendell H
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Pole, AKTo Ruby, 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 · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 was making a personal cross-country flight under Title 14, CFR Part 91. He said he was circling an off airport landing site at a reduced power setting, and when he applied throttle the engine quit. The pilot reported that during taxi for takeoff prior to the flight, the airplane's engine had carburetor ice, and he felt that this was what caused the engine to quit since he had not applied carburetor heat when he reduced power. The airplane made an emergency descent and impacted on muskeg. During the landing, the main landing gear attachments and left wing were damaged. The pilot indicated that there were no known mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to use carburetor heat, while operating at a reduced engine power while maneuvering in carburetor icing conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC08CA121
- Event ID
- 20081003X62318
- Case number
- ANC08CA121
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: d64bd1f2f41cdbf2dce165ebd87621ca1ce7f27316dcfc13e9a9c007141cb724; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:21:12.083Z.