ANC15LA020 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Bettles Airport (BTT) to Bettles Airport (BTT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC15LA020
- 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
- N4697C
- Operator
- Seth W. Mcmillan · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bettles Airport (BTT), Bettles, AKTo Bettles Airport (BTT), BETTLES, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 62 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
- Initial climb
- 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 commercial pilot stated that, shortly after takeoff for the personal flight, when the airplane was between about 50 and 70 ft above ground level, a total loss of engine power occurred. After completing the engine failure emergency procedures checklist, the pilot lowered the airplane's nose and attempted to find a suitable landing area. When he determined that the airplane would not be able to reach the desired landing point, he arrested the descent, and the airplane settled into an area of densely populated birch trees along the side of a river.
A postaccident examination of the airplane's systems and engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomalies. The engine was test run, and it operated through a full range of power settings with no anomalies noted.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident engine examination and testing revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC15LA020
- Event ID
- 20150412X21537
- Case number
- ANC15LA020
- 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 2015-04-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 707af77daf72abec855936cba326038d23df0969dd6a0e1f6113e1bf0bd7842b; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:13:09.853Z.