CEN13CA306 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Hendricks County Gordon Graham Field (2R2) to Hendricks County Gordon Graham Field (2R2)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13CA306
- 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
- N3119A
- Operator
- David Needham
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hendricks County Gordon Graham Field (2R2), Danville, INTo Hendricks County Gordon Graham Field (2R2), Danville, IN
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that the purpose of the flight was to accumulate two hours solo flight time in reference to insurance requirements. He stated that during his second landing, while transitioning into the flare, he saw the airspeed was 65 mph; he reduced engine power to idle and banked with a “slight” right wing low into the wind. The tail wheel airplane touched down with right main and then left main. The pilot reported that he “got really light on my wheels” and swerved to the right. He swerved to left and the swerves were subsequently getting worse. He said that he could not get the aircraft straightened out. The left wheel skidded on runway and the airplane came to rest on the pavement with the pilot’s door open. The pilot’s door would not close and the pilot taxied the airplane back to the hanger. During a post flight inspection, the pilot discovered white dust on the left main tire. He subsequently found his tire marks just north of the midfield turn off and followed the marks to their end where he found three pieces of the left wheel half. The pilot reported that there were no airplane mechanical malfunctions in reference to the flight. A subsequent examination of the airplane revealed there was substantial damage to the fuselage and landing gear box.
Probable cause
The pilot not maintaining directional control of the airplane during the landing roll resulting in the ground loop.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13CA306
- Event ID
- 20130530X05923
- Case number
- CEN13CA306
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-05-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c55f7aaec3dcdaa9e35066ac75d10b0ff0f017cb9623adfba6ebf1f249886081; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:43:02.739Z.