FLIGHT FINDINGSAVIATION OCCURRENCE MAP
Back to map

CEN17LA301 · Beech D17S

3 Aug 2017 · Colorado Springs, CO, United States

Beech D17S · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing

From Gallup Municipal Airport (GUP) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)

Report a problem

Event

NTSB case
CEN17LA301
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
0
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

Beech D17S

Aircraft type
Beechcraft 17
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
N44562
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Gallup Municipal Airport (GUP), Gallup, NMTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, CO
Aircraft age
About 73 years (built 1944)
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 · landing roll
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 on ground
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
  • Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
  • Personnel issues › Task performance

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The airline transport pilot was landing in the tailwheel-equipped airplane in right quartering tailwind conditions. After touchdown, with the tailwheel on the runway, the airplane drifted to the right and the pilot applied left brake. The right landing gear collapsed, and the airplane ground looped and came to rest upright near the right edge of the runway. The pilot stated there were no mechanical malfunctions with the airplane, and that, "it got away from me, I guess."

Probable cause

The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll with a quartering tailwind.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN17LA301
Event ID
20170803X53614
Case number
CEN17LA301
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: 3038f1e5b614ebcc8b272a49aae5024abd23e03f17175c30a0f05e83a32987d5; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:39:29.198Z.