GAA17CA489 · Cessna 170 UNDESIGNAT
Cessna 170 UNDESIGNAT · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Seneca Municipal Airport (62K) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA489
- 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 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
- N4189V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seneca Municipal Airport (62K), Seneca, KSTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- 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
***This report was modified on January 3, 2018. Please see the docket for this accident to view the original report.***
The pilot reported that, during a go-around after a low approach, the left cabin door opened. He added that he reached back to close the door and that the airplane then aerodynamically stalled. The pilot was unable to recover, and the airplane impacted the ground and struck multiple fences.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack during a go-around. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to attempt to close a passenger door during a critical phase of flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA489
- Event ID
- 20170815X55733
- Case number
- GAA17CA489
- 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: 0c82b7f2e81d2d3fe1eca209fa6fbefeebe98c6f1f8b692be8ce92a80d575f4f; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:42:36.893Z.