ANC09CA026 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Dillingham, AK to Dillingham, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09CA026
- 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
- N2989D
- Operator
- Fox Brian
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dillingham, AKTo Dillingham, 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
- Initial climb
- 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 control in flight
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- 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 private pilot was taking off from a snow-covered area in a ski-equipped airplane for a personal local flight. The pilot said that he took off to the south, but that the snow conditions caused more drag than expected. He said that the airplane cleared the first part of the trees at the end of the takeoff area, but that the wing stalled and the right wing dropped. The airplane then clipped the top of the trees and descended, coming to rest on its right side. The pilot reported no mechanical problems with the airplane, and that he had packed down the takeoff area with a snow machine prior to taking off. He also reported that he aborted a takeoff to the northeast just before the accident takeoff to the south. In a written statement, the pilot reported the maximum gross weight of the airplane as 2200 pounds and its weight at the time of the takeoff as 2600 pounds.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of unsuitable terrain for takeoff and his failure to attain adequate airspeed to avoid an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to take off with the airplane over its maximum allowable gross weight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09CA026
- Event ID
- 20090327X25149
- Case number
- ANC09CA026
- 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: e43e84ae5a471ac042b558a83a13358d90423e678e93382fe97b63b169f6ca08; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:52:51.193Z.