WPR22LA155 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA155
- 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 170B
- 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
- N2929D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1956)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that, the pilot receiving instruction performed a wheel landing in the tailwheel equipped airplane. During the landing roll, with the tailwheel still off the ground, the airplane drifted left, which was counteracted with right rudder control. Shortly after, the right wing suddenly lifted, and the airplane veered to the right. Despite left rudder input, the airplane ground looped to the right. During the ground loop, the left main landing gear axle bolts broke, and the left wing was substantially damaged when it struck the ground. The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. He added that he felt the loss of control was due to a dust devil. At the time of the accident, the pilot was landing the airplane on runway 10R with wind from 180° at 4 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot receiving instructions failure to maintain directional control during landing. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA155
- Event ID
- 20220418104957
- Case number
- WPR22LA155
- 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, coordinates, 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: 55abc03d03a8930b6a058a215ae77387971ab482beb36a3522e6d877e1b72d7b; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:08:33.486Z.