ERA10LA077 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) during initial climb
From Cox Airport (NC81) to Charlottesville Albemarle Airport (CHO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA077
- 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
- N2758D
- Operator
- James Johnson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cox Airport (NC81), Apex, NCTo Charlottesville Albemarle Airport (CHO), Charlottesville, VA
- 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after departure the airplane’s engine began to run rough. The pilot attempted unsuccessfully to troubleshoot the problem before initiating a return to the departure airport. During the return, the pilot noticed smoke coming from the right side of the engine that got progressively worse before the engine lost total power. After realizing that he would not be able to make it to the airport, the pilot performed a forced landing in a pasture where the airplane was completely consumed by the postcrash fire with the exception of the tail section. The extensive fire damage to the engine and forward part of the airframe precluded determination of the fire’s ignition source.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power in flight and a fire in the engine compartment for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA077
- Event ID
- 20091125X75342
- Case number
- ERA10LA077
- 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: c15cebd66162f8c4eda04fa78ecc0dbbf522d9fad5b20f2a3b6cc3cc618da59f; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:31:23.010Z.