ANC20CA011 · Cessna 170 B
Cessna 170 B · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Fairbanks, AK to Fairbanks International Airport (FAI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC20CA011
- 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 B
- 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
- N4667C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks, AKTo Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1953)
- 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
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during a night flight, in his tailwheel ski-equipped airplane, weather conditions began to deteriorate, and he elected to navigate to a nearby airport, with an estimated 20-minute fuel reserve upon his arrival. Once at the intended airport, he was unable to activate the runway lights via the pilot-controlled lighting and diverted to an alternate airport approximately 35 miles away. About 10 nautical miles from the alternate airport, the engine lost all power due to fuel exhaustion. Subsequently, he made an emergency landing to an off-airport field. During the emergency landing the ski-equipped airplane nosed over and sustained substantial damage to the empennage.
14 Code of Federal Regulation 91.151 Fuel requirements for flight in VFR conditions, states in part:
(a) No person may begin a flight in an airplane under VFR conditions unless (considering wind and forecast weather conditions) there is enough fuel to fly to the first point of intended landing and, assuming normal cruising speed-
(1) During the day, to fly after that for at least 30 minutes; or
(2) At night, to fly after that for at least 45 minutes.
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 improper fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, an emergency off-airport landing, and a nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC20CA011
- Event ID
- 20200102X54844
- Case number
- ANC20CA011
- 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 2020-01-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cfd642fafb9999f9c3cbf8649f3319209569bc45fe12147d9a4d1d67d9f8c4e6; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:51:34.044Z.