LAX00LA005 · Cessna 210B
Cessna 210B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport (LMT) to Tonopah Airport (TPH)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA005
- 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 210B
- 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
- N9609X
- Operator
- George W. Mojonnier · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crater Lake-Klamath Regional Airport (LMT), Klamath Falls, ORTo Tonopah Airport (TPH)
- 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 pattern turn to base
- 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 terrain/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vmo), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Altitude, not verified
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airport operator reported that it was a very dark night and the airplane requested advisories on the Unicom frequency. The runway lights illuminated and the operator awaited the airplane's arrival. When the airplane did not appear and the runway lights shutoff automatically, the operator began looking for the airplane. He saw a rotating red light in the area where the base leg should have been flown, drove to the site, and discovered the airplane. The airport operator said that the area surrounding the airport is very sparsely populated and the only lighted visual queues during night approaches are the runway lights. The pilot said he lost sight of the threshold lights and unknowingly lost excessive altitude while on downwind. During the base turn, the left main wheel touched the ground and rolled a short distance before the gear collapsed and the airplane slid to a stop.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to monitor his altitude and maintain an adequate terrain clearance during the approach. The dark night lighting conditions and the visual illusion created by the lack of ground reference lights were factors in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA005
- Event ID
- 20001212X19981
- Case number
- LAX00LA005
- 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 1999-10-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3d398abe7766d8c647d20e3f548776f7468214a0df27f3f776a68cfd1610e965; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:49:14.614Z.