WPR15FA049 · Cessna 170B UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 170B UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Black Hills Airport-Clyde Ice Field (SPF) to Black Hills Airport-Clyde Ice Field (SPF)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15FA049
- 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 UNDESIGNAT
- 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
- N3292A
- Operator
- Kovarik Peter M
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Black Hills Airport-Clyde Ice Field (SPF), Spearfish, SDTo Black Hills Airport-Clyde Ice Field (SPF), Spearfish, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1953)
- 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, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed for a local area flight. When he did not return, a search was initiated, and the wreckage was located in a saddle between two mountain peaks. There were no identified witnesses to the accident. Onsite documentation revealed that the airplane collided with the terrain in a vertical nose-down attitude. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
According to a friend of the pilot, the pilot was very comfortable flying in the local area at altitudes of 150 ft above ground level or less. Given the pilot's preference for low altitude flight, it is likely that he was maneuvering around the mountainous terrain, lost control of the airplane, and did not have sufficient altitude to recover before ground impact.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airplane control while maneuvering, which resulted in a collision with mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15FA049
- Event ID
- 20141130X32637
- Case number
- WPR15FA049
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f1c5ec061ae99ed151cda5925b16487238b5489f284166bbdf91b28dbe1689f8; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:29:18.486Z.