GAA17CA468 · Cessna 170 A
Cessna 170 A · Accident: windshear or thunderstorm en route
From Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY) to Duchesne Municipal Airport (U69)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA468
- 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
- N1214D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY), Moab, UTTo Duchesne Municipal Airport (U69), Duchesne, UT
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Windshear or thunderstorm
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he and his passenger were waiting in the fixed-base operator building for the storm system to pass. When the storm system appeared to have passed and the wind had calmed significantly, the pilot checked the Automated Surface Observing System and took off from runway 21. During the initial climb, the pilot observed "just beyond the end of the pavement was the obvious sign of a small microburst developing with blowing dust curling up in several different directions centered just to the right of the centerline, and it was growing spreading out quickly."
The pilot was able to climb the airplane to about 400 ft before encountering wind at the departure end of the runway. He made a slight left turn to avoid power lines and performed a forced landing. The airplane landed hard and sustained substantial damage to both wings, the fuselage, and empennage.
The Special METAR reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 280° at 23 knots, gusting to 34 knots. The visibility was 10 statute miles with light rain. There were few clouds at 3,500 ft, and the ceiling was broken at 9,000 ft and 11,000 ft. The temperature was 84°F, and the dew point was 45°F. The altimeter setting was 30.06 inches of mercury. The peak wind was from 10° at 40 knots at 1903, and the wind shifted direction at 1910. The rain began at 1958 with trace precipitation. The density altitude was 7,164 ft.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper decision to depart in unfavorable weather conditions, which resulted in a hard, forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA468
- Event ID
- 20170804X11340
- Case number
- GAA17CA468
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-08-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0d25a969b417a76bbb828e9603b84bf067e1e8b58745d01229aa267f29a5e021; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:39:45.915Z.