ERA14LA050 · Cessna 170
Cessna 170 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Ridgely Airpark (RJD) to Ridgely Airpark (RJD)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA050
- 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
- N4216V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ridgely Airpark (RJD), Ridgely, MDTo Ridgely Airpark (RJD), Ridgely, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1948)
- 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 downwind
- 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 airplane had not been flown for about 8 months. Before departing to practice landings at the airport, the pilot/owner added aviation gasoline to the airplane's fuel tanks, which also contained automotive gasoline that had been added about 6 to 8 months previously. While on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, the airplane experienced a sudden, total loss of engine power. The pilot was not able to restart the engine or land on the runway, so he performed a forced landing to a field. During the landing, the airplane struck a ditch and sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The airplane had been operated for about 6 hours since its most recent documented annual inspection, which was performed about 3 years before the accident. The pilot reported that he found water in the airplane's fuel system the day before the accident but that fuel samples taken before the flight were not contaminated. Examination of the engine did not reveal evidence of any catastrophic engine malfunction; however, at the time of the examination, the engine and wings had been removed from the fuselage, which precluded an examination of the airplane's fuel system.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA050
- Event ID
- 20131127X35837
- Case number
- ERA14LA050
- 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: 15e07dd50f1467a6022992b535bea07e84b94fc87943cb210a0cb514cc0008e0; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:08:59.890Z.