CEN16LA343 · Cessna 170A
Cessna 170A · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Bear River, MN (private airstrip) to Range Regional Airport (HIB)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA343
- 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 170A
- 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
- N1726D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bear River, MN (private airstrip)To Range Regional Airport (HIB), Hibbing, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 65 years (built 1951)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a personal flight, and his last recollection of the flight was when he entered the traffic pattern for the runway. He stated that he was unsure if he "had a bad landing or tried to go around" when the accident occurred. The airplane came to rest upright in the grass alongside the runway facing southeast; the forward fuselage was crushed aft, which was consistent with a nose-down impact. The flaps were found fully retracted. A postaccident examination of the runway did not reveal any tire skid marks that could be associated with a loss of directional control after the airplane touched down. The initial point of impact was where the left wingtip had hit the ground about 30 ft from the left edge of the runway. The propeller exhibited damage consistent with minimal engine power at impact. The wreckage examination did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the available information, the pilot lost airplane control, but it could not be determined if this occurred while landing or during a go-around attempt.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control, which resulted in impact with terrain near the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA343
- Event ID
- 20160901X60603
- Case number
- CEN16LA343
- 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: b942de35f5cc9fa86e5913a7248ee2cb64bc052fd798b9012dbb44eb1860839b; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:12:59.830Z.