ATL94FA056 · Cessna P210R
Cessna P210R · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Lakefront Airport (NEW) to 61X · Sarasota, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL94FA056
- 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
- 4 · 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 P210R
- 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
- N55MM
- Operator
- Weiser, Joel J. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakefront Airport (NEW), New Orleans, LATo 61X · Sarasota, FL
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT RECEIVED A FULL WEATHER BRIEFING BEFORE THE IFR FLIGHT. CONVECTIVE THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY WAS FORECAST FOR THE ROUTE OF FLIGHT, THERE WERE NUMEROUS THUNDERSTORMS IN THE AREA AT THE TIME OF DEPARTURE, AND A TORNADO WATCH WAS IN EFFECT AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT. AFTER LEVELING AT FL210, HE REPORTED THAT CONDITIONS WERE 'GETTING ROUGH.' SHORTLY THEREAFTER, HE REPORTED PROBLEMS WITH THE AIRCRAFT GYRO SYSTEM, THEN SAID ALL GYRO'S WERE 'OUT.' HE ELECTED TO DESCEND IN AN ATTEMPT TO LOCATE VFR WEATHER. AS THE AIRCRAFT DESCENDED, RADIO & RADAR CONTACT WERE LOST. WRECKAGE WAS FOUND DISTRIBUTED OVER AN AREA ABOUT 4-1/2 MILES IN LENGTH. AN EXAM OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED EVIDENCE THAT THE WINGS HAD FAILED IN AN UPWARD DIRECTION. DURING AN EXAM OF THE VACUUM POWERED ATTITUDE GYRO, NO ROTATIONAL SCRATCHING WAS FOUND ON THE GYRO OR IN THE GYRO HOUSING. AN EXAM OF THE LEFT VACUUM PUMP REVEALED THAT THE PLASTIC DRIVE COUPLING HAD SIGNS OF HEAT STRESS & MELTING, THAT THE INTERNAL VEINS WERE BROKEN & CRACKED & THAT THERE WAS A DEPOSIT OF CARBON MATERIAL INSIDE THE HOUSING. THE RIGHT VACUUM PUMP HAD EVIDENCE OF ROTATIONAL SCRATCHING. THE GYROS SHOULD HAVE OPERATED WITH 1 VACUUM PUMP IN OPERATION.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT DUE TO SPATIAL DISORIENTATION, AND EXCEEDING THE DESIGN STRESS LIMITS OF THE AIRCRAFT. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE PILOT'S FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, OVERCONFIDENCE IN HIMSELF AND THE AIRPLANE, FAILURE OF THE LEFT VACUUM PUMP, PARTIAL LOSS OF THE VACUUM SYSTEM, AND AN INOPERATIVE ATTITUDE INDICATOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL94FA056
- Event ID
- 20001206X00834
- Case number
- ATL94FA056
- 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: 18c09a3ec1ced2f550f1bf1b766e6b6d45592375e66478d0ed34b609a7f17564; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:14:15.997Z.