ANC13FA093 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Glennallen, AK to Glennallen, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13FA093
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N170BN
- Operator
- Zobel Michael S
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glennallen, AKTo Glennallen, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1952)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 in flight
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed a remote, off-airport site to search for a moose he had shot earlier in the day. A witness observed the airplane perform a series of low-altitude maneuvers before flying by his location about 80 to 100 feet above the ground. The airplane then began a left turn, and the nose of the airplane pitched down abruptly and began to spin. The airplane subsequently descended vertically, nose first, and it collided with the tundra and brush-covered terrain.
A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Given the lack of mechanical deficiencies with the airplane and engine, the witness statements, and the nature of the damage to the airplane, it is likely that the pilot inadvertently stalled and spun the airplane at a low altitude and was unable to recover.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed while maneuvering at a low altitude, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin and impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13FA093
- Event ID
- 20130906X35911
- Case number
- ANC13FA093
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-09-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f8373ca2dd7259cc570aaebd93b00072fbed4f2c5a75e54f675a429bc8701850; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:03:36.755Z.