LAX94LA091 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Q99 to Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA091
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N5384W
- Operator
- Robert J. Kushner · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Q99To Mammoth Yosemite Airport (MMH), Mammoth Lakes, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Anti-ice/deice system, not used
- Pilot in command › Descent, not corrected
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, not performed
- Pilot in command › Proper climb rate, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that as the aircraft entered the initial climb after rotation, the airspeed began decreasing. He lowered the nose slightly to counter the decreasing airspeed and the aircraft hit the ground shortly thereafter. FBO personnel at the airport said the pilot attempted to takeoff with ground visibility of 150 feet in heavy fog. The FBO line person who fueled the aircraft just prior to departure stated that he had to 'scrape ice away from the fuel filler ports on the wings in order to open the fuel caps.' The line person said the ice was like frozen dew and very rough in character. An FAA inspector stated that he found a series of propeller slashes in the ground just beyond the end of the runway. A path of ground scars led through a damaged fence and terminated at the aircraft wreckage about one eighth of a mile from the runway end. No discrepancies were noted in the examination of the aircraft or engine.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper aircraft preflight inspection, and his failure to use pitot heat during the takeoff in icing conditions, which led to a blocked pitot tube. The blockage resulted in erroneous airspeed indications during the initial climb, which induced the pilot to reduce the aircraft pitch attitude to a point where the aircraft entered an uncorrected descent to ground impact.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA091
- Event ID
- 20001206X00637
- Case number
- LAX94LA091
- 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: 5ccaa60dda2d4a80bf28bbd260e3f177cd986ae03c656654d29d9abe20380d46; retrieved 2026-09-21T14:05:48.968Z.