FTW98TA051 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT) to Bryce Canyon Airport (BCE)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98TA051
- 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
- Incident
- 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 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
- N731NX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, COTo Bryce Canyon Airport (BCE), UT
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Electrical system, inverter › Failure
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bryce Canyon, UT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that smoke began coming into the cockpit and 'I could hardly see the propeller.' He stated that 'at that point, we discovered the indicator light for the cabin door seal pressurization pump was on.' The pilot believes that it had been operating continuously due to an air leak in the system. In order to eliminate electrical power to the pressurization pump, the pilot turned the master switch off. After landing the airplane, the pilot located a fire in the upholstery, which he extinguished. Postincident examination revealed that the aluminum housing of a resistor (inverter) in the cabin door seal pressurization pump (an STC modification) had melted and deformed. Further investigation revealed that the pump unit had not been installed properly due to lack of adequate written instructions. Additionally, the design of the unit did not include a pilot controlled on-off switch, adequate space for cooling during operation, sufficient procedural directions for when the amber caution light comes on, and there was no way to monitor the pumps operating time limitation (10 minutes). It was also determined that the wrong amperage fuse had been installed in the pump system.
Probable cause
The failure of the resistor (inverter) in the door seal pressurization air pump due to continuous operation. Factors were a failure in the door seal pressurization system, its inadequate design by the manufacturer, its inadequate written instructions for installation and operation, and the installation of the improper electrical fuse by unknown persons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98TA051
- Event ID
- 20001208X09032
- Case number
- FTW98TA051
- 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: a71ee51755c5047c2f87d1343dd771bd6d9d0e3546952b5835c170c59916a49f; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:21:13.551Z.