ATL89FA173 · Cessna 210H
Cessna 210H · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Leesburg, VA to Selma, AL
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL89FA173
- 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
- 4 · 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 210H
- 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
- N5939F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Leesburg, VATo Selma, AL
- 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
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE ACFT WAS ON A VFR X-COUNTRY FLT AT NGT, WHEN AN IN-FLT BREAK-UP OCCURRED. SUBSEQUENTLY, WRECKAGE WAS SCATTERED OVER ABOUT A 1.4 MI AREA. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THE LEFT WING FAILED IN POSITIVE OVERLOAD APRX 3' OUTBOARD OF THE WING ROOT. THE CABIN DOOR & TAIL SURFACES ALSO SEPD. ALL FRACTURES EXHIBITED EVIDENCE OF OVERLAOD. NO EVIDENCE OF ANY PRE-EXISTING DEFECT WAS FND. THE NON-INST RATED PLT WAS NOT IN CONTACT WITH ANY ATC FACILITY DURING THE FLT. RADAR DATA SHOWED THE ACFT MADE SVRL ALT EXCURSIONS DURING ABOUT A 30 MIN PERIOD BEFORE THE ACDNT. JUST BEFORE DISAPPEARING FM RADAR, THE FLT TRACK DEVIATED TO THE LEFT. THE ACDNT OCCURRED ON A DARK NGT AT ABT 2147 EDT; THOUGH HIS LAST REST PERIOD WAS NOT VERIFIED, THE PLT ROUTINELY SLEPT FM 2100 TO 0400. ABT 5 MI SW AT THE TRI-CITY RGNL ARPT, THE 2152 WX WAS IN PART: 5000 FT SCT, 8500' BKN, 30,000' OVC, VIS 7 MI, WND FM 130 DEG AT 7 KTS. ELEV OF THE WX STATION WAS 1519'. THE ACFT WAS AT 8700' MSL WHEN RADAR CTC WAS LOST.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE AIRCRAFT AFTER BECOMING SPATIALLY DISORIENTED, AND HIS EXCEEDING THE DESIGN STRESS LIMITS OF THE AIRCRAFT WHILE ATTEMPTING TO RECOVER FROM AN UNCONTROLLED DESCENT. FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: DARKNESS, CLOUD CONDITION, PILOT FATIGUE, AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE. .
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL89FA173
- Event ID
- 20001213X28489
- Case number
- ATL89FA173
- 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 1989-07-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7bfce12dce3a048f0a765ae39f271a4b528935af95807a3f21a7ccc193f8adb2; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:15:38.561Z.