LAX00LA339 · Cessna 210E 210F

During a porpoise and hard landing, the nose wheel collapsed and the firewall was pushed in. The pilot began to preflare about 500 feet from the landing threshold. He applied backpressure to the elevator, but nothing happened. He applied more back elevator with no effect. He began adding power about 20 feet above the runway to arrest the airplane's descent, but was still nose low. He added power to bring the nose up, but the airplane began to climb. By this time, the pilot approximated that he was 1,500 to 2,000 feet down the runway. He felt that he did not have elevator control and thought it would be too risky to attempt a go-around and approach with that condition. He elected to land, even though it would probably result in damage to the airplane. He reduced power and the airplane touched down on the nose wheel and began to porpoise. On the third bounce, the nose wheel collapsed and the airplane came to a stop on the runway. The pilot removed the rear cabin panel, and noticed that the elevator cables were loose and sagging. He checked the cables to the tail cone and noted that they appeared to be intact and connected. The post accident examination of the airplane did not reveal any mechanical anomalies that would account for the loss of elevator effectiveness. During the repair process, maintenance personnel discovered one pulley that would not move, and another pulley on the firewall exhibited scratch marks. However, they did not observe any cable or pulley wear. One of the pulleys in the elevator control system was attached to the engine firewall.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset