ERA25LA320 · Cessna 170B
Cessna 170B · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Bowman Field (B10) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA320
- 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 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
- N170JL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bowman Field (B10), Livermore Falls, METo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 72 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
- Landing
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that purpose of the flight was to conduct two takeoffs and landings as part of a short takeoff and landing (STOL) competition. Runway 20 was in use, with winds from the south at 5 knots, gusting to 10 knots. Following the second takeoff, ground personnel advised the pilot that wind conditions had increased. During the second landing, at an altitude of about 20 ft above ground level (agl), the pilot inadvertently allowed the airplane’s airspeed to decay as it approached the intended touchdown point, and the left wing stalled. He attempted to correct for the stalled condition but was unable to regain control of the airplane. A spectator positioned near the accident site recorded the accident sequence. Review of the spectator-recorded video showed the airplane descending from about 20 ft agl in a nose-up attitude. The left wing dropped and contacted the ground, and the airplane rotated to the left. The nose subsequently impacted the ground, and the airplane continued to rotate left and came to rest about 180° from its original direction of flight. The airplane’s left wing and fuselage sustained substantial damage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during landing in gusting wind conditions, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA320
- Event ID
- 20250827200879
- Case number
- ERA25LA320
- 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: 9111a3d64bd03fb2347b226d1ade2cad1a00bb82ff2bebb14a596a1a5272436a; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:16:20.722Z.