NYC97FA103 · Cessna 210M
Cessna 210M · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97FA103
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 210M
- 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
- N9162M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport (ROA), Roanoke, VATo not recorded
- 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
- Approach
- 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 control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner filed an instrument flight plan, listed himself as the pilot-in-command (PIC), and departed on an instrument proficiency flight with two passengers, who were both certified flight instructors (CFIs). The airplane was vectored for an LDA Runway 6 Approach in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), and all radio communications were normal. The airplane was observed on radar turning away from the final approach course. No further communications were received from the airplane, and it descended below radar coverage. A witness on the ground observed the airplane exit and reenter the clouds, then heard a reduction in engine power. The airplane descended from the base of the clouds, in a nose down vertical descent, with the wings intact. Engine noise was heard to increase, followed by a 'swoosh' and bang. The 70-year old PIC had neither scheduled the flight with the employer of the CFIs nor was he listed on the their schedule. The 22-year old CFI rated passenger (seated in the front) had been a full-time college student until the previous month. His total flight experience was 340 hours, of which, 24 hours were as a CFI; and he had no experience in the make and model of airplane or with the PIC.
Probable cause
failure of the PIC to maintain control of the airplane, due to spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97FA103
- Event ID
- 20001208X08208
- Case number
- NYC97FA103
- 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: 778a59af41b6c4a1a1db9592ef3f1b44165716235fd3c80f998fa3ecc099a075; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:56:27.556Z.