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LAX97LA101 · Cessna 210H

8 Feb 1997 · Big Bear City, CA, United States

Cessna 210H · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing

From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT) to L35

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Event

NTSB case
LAX97LA101
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 210H

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
N6137F
Operator
Chow, T.G · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From San Gabriel Valley Airport (EMT), El Monte, CATo L35
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
Landing
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
Substantial

Cause areas

  • Landing gear, gear switch › Corroded

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot had normal gear indications while landing. The airplane settled on its left side after the left main landing gear retracted into the wheel well during landing roll. The landing gear down limit switches were found stuck and appeared corroded and dirty. The stuck switches illuminated the landing gear down light, inconsistent with the landing gear position. They affected the sequence in which the landing gear operated, in that once the nose was down, the sequencing valve would transfer hydraulic pressure from the main gear actuators to the landing gear door actuators before the main landing gear would fully extend to the locked position. The airplane had been tied down outside on the airport ramp and had only flown 10 hours since the annual inspection, which was completed on 2/16/96.

Probable cause

a corroded landing gear down limit switch, which resulted in a retracted left main gear during the landing sequence.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record LAX97LA101
Event ID
20001208X07422
Case number
LAX97LA101
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: ca0b135efd2d2e98cfda9646a613c335df4eb49e8bc4e05063b09b126ae4418e; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:21:21.948Z.