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CEN09CA585 · Cessna 170B

11 Sept 2009 · Dalhart, TX, United States

Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing

From Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS) to Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN09CA585
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
N2929N
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Cheyenne Regional Jerry Olson Field (CYS), Cheyenne, WYTo Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT), Dalhart, TX
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
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 on ground
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
  • Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
  • Personnel issues › Action/decision

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot elected to land the tailwheel airplane on runway 17. During the landing rollout the airplane became airborne, swerved right, and again contacted the runway. The left main landing gear separated from the fuselage and subsequently the left wing impacted the ground. The airplane came to rest on its left side and the pilot and passenger were able to exit unassisted. Around the time of the accident, the automated weather observing system at the accident airport reported the winds to be varying from 050 to 090 degrees at 13 gusting to 17 knots. A review of airport information revealed that runway 03 was available for use at the time. There were no reported mechanical malfunctions with the airplane's flight controls.

Probable cause

The pilot’s decision to land with a tailwind resulting in a loss of directional control.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN09CA585
Event ID
20090914X74644
Case number
CEN09CA585
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. 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: 5fa086fa58583c14966bca12e439894bf2ba3889557784b680ec0ce3f255cb26; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:18:10.121Z.