DEN99FA034 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Scottsdale Airport (SDL) to Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99FA034
- 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
- 3 · 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 P210N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- 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
- N79NL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scottsdale Airport (SDL), Scottsdale, AZTo Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT), Wichita, KS
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Vacuum system › Failure, total
- Wing, spar › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported a dual vacuum pump failure while flying IFR at FL220. Despite having a standby electric artificial horizon, aircraft control was lost during the pilot's attempt to descend to 13,000 feet (reported cloud base). The airframe was overstressed and the right wing failed. Laboratory examination of the vacuum-driven gyroscopes disclosed no evidence of high rotation at impact. Both vacuum pumps bore signatures indicative of failure prior to impact. Not enough of the check valve manifold remained to determine its operational status.
Probable cause
Total failure of the vacuum system, and failure of the pilot to maintain aircraft control, resulting in wing spar failure. Factors were the pilot's spatial disorientation, and his exceeding the design stress limits of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99FA034
- Event ID
- 20001204X00046
- Case number
- DEN99FA034
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 07b7dec32248f6022348dba2540999b6a178a76b8f707de27dfb275d8c2ade15; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:16:07.561Z.