CEN16LA078 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: fuel starvation during takeoff
From Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP) to Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA078
- 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
- N3035A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP), Ingleside, TXTo Ingleside Regional Airport (TFP), Ingleside, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 63 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that the engine cylinders had been replaced before the accident flight and that the purpose of the flight was to continue a cylinder break-in period. The engine run-up and propeller check were completed during the taxi to the runway to keep the ground run-up to a minimum. After engine start, no anomalies were noted. The pilot stated that the break-in procedures called for lower cylinder head temperatures and less than full power at the beginning of takeoff. After the airplane took off and reached about 100 ft above ground level (agl), the pilot slowly reduced rpm and the manifold pressure to about 65 percent power. At 200 ft agl, the engine lost partial power. The engine briefly regained some power, but it then lost power again. The pilot executed a forced landing in mesquite tree-covered terrain.
A postaccident examination and functional test of the engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot stated that he believed the engine lost power due to carburetor ice, and the weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to serious carburetor icing at cruise power. It is likely that the engine lost power due to carburetor icing.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during takeoff due to carburetor icing, which resulted in a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA078
- Event ID
- 20160105X22916
- Case number
- CEN16LA078
- 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: d3c8ec6cfaccac32dc1a2365491065ee3bd3318c4feb6492d12e1e6e256d8fd6; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:04:09.893Z.