ANC11CA095 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during landing
From Cape Pole Seaplane Base (Z71) to Cape Pole Seaplane Base (Z71)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC11CA095
- 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 170A
- 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
- N5406C
- Operator
- Joseph Gugel
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cape Pole Seaplane Base (Z71), Anchorage, AKTo Cape Pole Seaplane Base (Z71), Anchorage, 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
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was landing his tailwheel-equipped airplane on a dry, gravel runway at the conclusion of a local area flight. After landing, the pilot applied the brakes to slow the airplane, and, while depressing both brake pedals, the left brake pedal unexpectedly went to the floor. The airplane swerved to the right, went off the right side of the runway, and nosed over in an area of soft, marshy, wet tundra, sustaining substantial damage to the rudder, left wing, and left aileron. A postaccident examination revealed that a hydraulic brake supply line fitting near the airplane's fuselage had broken, which resulted in a loss of brake pressure to the left brake. The hydraulic brake line was not secured to the landing gear strut as required, which allowed the line to flex and bend at the fitting during flight. The pilot reported that he recently rebuilt the airplane himself.
Probable cause
The fracture of a hydraulic brake line fitting due to incorrect installation of the brake line by the pilot/owner, which resulted in a loss of brake pressure and subsequent loss of directional control during the landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC11CA095
- Event ID
- 20110905X01931
- Case number
- ANC11CA095
- 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: c8182c406faa9f1daa7a673956583e295cb67c229e440bd001813abfafba9285; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:41:54.919Z.