CEN24LA251 · Cessna 170 A
Cessna 170 A · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA251
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N9793A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 74 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot receiving instruction reported that he and the flight instructor were performing transition training in a tailwheel-equipped airplane. After landing to the dry asphalt runway and during the landing roll, the airplane drifted to the left and the pilot applied right rudder and right brake. The airplane corrected to the right and the flight instructor applied left rudder and left brake to straighten the direction of the airplane. Shortly thereafter, the left main landing gear axle failed, the wheel departed, and the airplane continued to travel to the right. The airplane departed the runway to the right and came to rest upright on a grass field. During the runway excursion, the left wing impacted the ground. The two occupants were able to egress from the airplane without further incident.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot classified the accident as a “typical tailwheel ground loop caused by the left gear axle failing and the pilot potentially overcorrecting on rollout.” The pilot further reported that the left axle (constructed of hollow aluminum) is an original part from when the airplane was manufactured in 1950.
Probable cause
The pilot and flight instructor’s failure to maintain directional control during the landing roll, which resulted in a ground loop with the left main landing gear axle failing, a runway excursion, and impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA251
- Event ID
- 20240708194629
- Case number
- CEN24LA251
- 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: ae9eb797b370e236e57692ebcfa1dfffab7a4e5f76057acf1bbc0fc1cdd52d40; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:00:43.650Z.