CEN21LA097 · Cessna 170 A
Cessna 170 A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA097
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N9590A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 71 years (built 1949)
- 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 › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a local flight in the tailwheel-equipped airplane when it bounced upon touchdown on the main landing gear. The pilot attempted to recover from the bounced landing by increasing elevator pitch to make a full-stall landing, but the airplane yawed to the right and ground looped on the runway. The pilot was unable to regain directional control of the airplane and it swerved off the right side of the runway where the left main landing gear collapsed and the left wingtip struck the ground. The pilot stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. The forward fuselage, left wing, and left aileron sustained substantial damage during the accident.
According to available weather data, the surface wind at the airport was calm when the pilot departed on the flight from runway 15, but at the time of the accident the wind direction had changed to the north-northwest at 6 knots. Based on the wind data, the wind direction would have resulted in a tailwind during landing. The pilot stated that the accident might have been avoided had he kept closer attention to the airport’s windsock and landed into the wind instead of having a tailwind during landing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during the landing with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA097
- Event ID
- 20201222102449
- Case number
- CEN21LA097
- 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, cause areas. 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: bc055447ed4df63d11c062bc732a43d0b1e4ddbd49f2c70a141b69bafa1de9a7; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:30:53.202Z.