FTW98FA338 · Cessna 210M
Cessna 210M · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Boone County Airport (HRO) to St Tammany Parish Hospital Heliport (LA24)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA338
- 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
- Visual 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
- N732PB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boone County Airport (HRO), Harrison, ARTo St Tammany Parish Hospital Heliport (LA24)
- 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 · VFR go-around
- 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 collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Climb, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane collided with trees and terrain during a dark night go-around at the pilot's home base airport after the 225-hour non-instrument rated private pilot was advised that he was landing downwind. The accident occurred at the conclusion of a 305-nautical mile cross country flight. No distress calls were received from the pilot prior to the accident. The airplane impacted terrain about a half mile from the departure end of runway 36 in a level flight attitude, with the landing gear and flaps in the retracted position. Other pilots based at the airport reported that due to a large lake to the northeast of the airport and the sparsely populated area, night takeoffs from runway 36 are 'instrument takeoffs' due to the lack of visual references. Examination of the airframe and a teardown examination of the engine and propeller did not reveal any anomalies that would have prevented normal flight operations. The pilot's total flight experience in night operations could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to establish a climb during a night go-around. Factors were the lack of visual cues available to the pilot and the dark night illumination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA338
- Event ID
- 20001211X10561
- Case number
- FTW98FA338
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-07-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 693cedef679bb04e52d3acfc8537de8ce1b0b031d7f7e62eee9e8b5e7b514ecd; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:29:09.747Z.