WPR11LA457 · Cessna 170
Cessna 170 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT) to Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA457
- 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
- 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
- N1677D
- Operator
- Swenson Roger A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (KVGT), North Las Vegas, NVTo Calvada Meadows Airport (NV74), Pahrump, NV
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he planned to accomplish a power-off landing to the runway and reduced engine power to idle during the descent from 9,000 feet to the traffic pattern altitude (3,700 feet). On final approach to the runway, the pilot applied carburetor heat. Shortly thereafter, the airplane descended below the glide path and the pilot increased engine power in an effort to correct the situation. The engine did not respond to the pilot’s inputs, and he subsequently landed short of the runway. The pilot reported that he suspected carburetor icing and that he should have applied carburetor heat immediately after retarding the throttle. However, the ground temperature and dew point at the time of the accident did not fall within the carburetor icing range. Postaccident examination of the engine and airframe revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during the landing approach for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA457
- Event ID
- 20110918X64522
- Case number
- WPR11LA457
- 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: 99a7d2fbeb3c7cc59ca9f16581364a21486dd8640ebc510cb47c51674bc58582; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:45:11.799Z.