WPR10CA394 · Cessna 170 A
Cessna 170 A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Four Corners Regional Airport (KFMN) to South Valley Regional Airport (KU42)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA394
- 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 A
- 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
- N179MM
- Operator
- Harold G. Jensen · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Four Corners Regional Airport (KFMN), Farmington, NMTo South Valley Regional Airport (KU42), Salt Lake City, UT
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he started his cross country flight in the tailwheel-equipped airplane in San Antonio, Texas with two rest stops in Roswell and Farmington, New Mexico. When landing to stop for a third time, the pilot checked the airport's automated weather, which indicated a “quartering right crosswind” of about 8 knots. The approach and landing were uneventful. During the landing roll a gust of wind struck the airplane and the airplane initiated a right turn. Despite the pilot’s control inputs the airplane ground looped, collapsing the left main landing gear and substantially damaging the left wing, fuselage and empennage. The pilot reported no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine prior to the accident. The accident airport’s automated weather observation system reported at the time of the accident, wind was from 240 at 13 knots. The pilot’s total flight time for the day was approximately 8.5 hours.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA394
- Event ID
- 20100810X21239
- Case number
- WPR10CA394
- 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: e390db77777dc6efc6d3c90d732e42dba8647a85faee177fcdda0a70fded5e10; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:49:16.236Z.