ERA17FA155 · Cessna 170 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 170 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Williston Municipal Airport (X60) to Inverness Airport (INF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17FA155
- 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
- 4 · 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 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
- N4244V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williston Municipal Airport (X60), Williston, FLTo Inverness Airport (INF), Inverness, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 69 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
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
***This report was modified on October 15, 2018. Please see the docket for this accident to view the original report.***
The commercial pilot and three passengers were making a personal cross-country flight in the airplane. After a refueling stop, the airplane taxied to the runway and departed. Security video and flight data showed that the airplane had just departed the airport and was about 280 ft above the ground when it stalled and spun to the left, impacting the ground in a nose-down attitude. Post-accident examination of the engine and airframe revealed no evidence of a mechanical anomaly or failure that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. The recorded weather at the airport at the time of the accident included a right-quartering headwind at 8 knots gusting to 17 knots. The flight data revealed that the airplane slowed to an estimated airspeed (ground speed with correction applied for reported wind conditions) of around 49 to 51 knots just before the stall occurred, which was near the airplane's published power-on stall speed of 46 knots; however, the gusting wind conditions likely resulted in a further decrease of the airplane's airspeed and increase of its angle-of-attack.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during initial climb in gusty wind conditions, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall/spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17FA155
- Event ID
- 20170416X54153
- Case number
- ERA17FA155
- 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: 7895d02a1daaa40c7aa14374d6f268ab6c7876f847ac177c808e71ca68845f30; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:01:11.109Z.