ANC09CA045 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Fairbanks, AK to Nenana Municipal Airport (ENN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09CA045
- 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
- N6946C
- Operator
- Chad A. Rowe · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks, AKTo Nenana Municipal Airport (ENN), Nenana, 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
- Takeoff
- 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 › Task performance
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 practicing touch-and-go landings on Runway 04L in a tailwheel-equipped airplane. He said that after completing a series of touch-and-go landings, he inadvertently landed long, and elected to roll to the end of the runway, then back-taxi on Runway 04L before departing. The pilot reported that while back-taxiing at high speed, a gust of wind lifted the tail of the airplane and he applied full engine power in an attempt to take off. He said that just after takeoff, the airplane drifted to the left and the left wing stalled. The left wing and left main landing gear wheel struck an area of grass-covered terrain and the left landing gear collapsed. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage. The pilot indicated that there were no preaccident mechanical problems with the airplane. At the time of the accident an Aviation Routine Weather Report (METAR) at the airport was reporting wind condition as variable at 4 knots. The pilot indicated in his written report to the NTSB the wind was from 070 degrees at 7 knots, gusting to 11 knots, and that he should have taxied slower.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control while taxiing for takeoff, and his failure to attain/maintain adequate airspeed after takeoff, resulting in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s excessive taxi speed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09CA045
- Event ID
- 20090518X52231
- Case number
- ANC09CA045
- 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: c13a3fe400aa471c7d93e3750020b43bfc1b039bee77a97e28501c465ec4ff06; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:04:51.070Z.