GAA17CA445 · Cessna 170 A
Cessna 170 A · Accident: hard landing
From Hayward Executive Airport (HWD) to Calaveras Co Maury Rasmussen Field (CPU)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA445
- 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 170 A
- 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
- N5596C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hayward Executive Airport (HWD), Hayward, CATo Calaveras Co Maury Rasmussen Field (CPU), San Andreas, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1950)
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that he landed on the main wheels, and while waiting for the tailwheel to drop, the "tailwheel jammed." He added that, when the tailwheel touched down, the airplane was difficult to control and veered to the left. He corrected for the veer, but the airplane veered to the right. He then conducted a go-around; however, once airborne, the airplane "did not appear to be producing proper power." He then aborted the go-around and opted to land on the remaining runway. About 25 ft above the runway, he set the airplane up for a wheel landing and descended. When the airplane was about 5 to 10 ft above the runway, the airplane "abruptly" sank and landed hard, and the main landing gear collapsed. Subsequently, the airplane came to rest nose down on the runway.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
During a telephone interview, the pilot reported that he believed the tailwheel had jammed before touchdown and that he had previously redesigned and altered the tailwheel. Further, the airplane produced insufficient power during the go-around. He reported that the tailwheel was mechanically "okay" when examined after the accident.
Additionally, an airframe and powerplants mechanic reported that he examined the tailwheel assembly after the accident and found no defects and no binding.
The pilot reported that the weather at the accident airport, about the time of the accident, was wind from 320° at 10 knots, gusting to 12 knots. The pilot landed on runway 31.
Photographs taken at the accident site showed torsional twisting of the propeller, consistent with the engine producing power at the time of impact. The National Transportation Safety Board did not examine the engine.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare during an aborted go-around in gusting wind conditions, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA445
- Event ID
- 20170727X81021
- Case number
- GAA17CA445
- 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: bcc14f8d6b60f0a6ba9d39e3c2c89a6657b3319baad7a11614945c6fe6f1cfd5; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:37:09.278Z.