LAX02LA027 · Cessna 210K
Cessna 210K · Accident: airframe, component or system failure
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to General William J Fox Airfield (WJF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA027
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 210K
- 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
- N8232M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NVTo General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, CA
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inaccurate
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, incorrect
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the first flight following an annual inspection, in night, visual meteorological conditions, when the pilot attempted to retract airplane's landing gear, the gear would neither fully retract nor fully extend. The pilot attempted to extend the landing gear using the emergency manual extension hand pump. He reported the ". . .pump handle was locked solid and would not move. . ." He couldn't get the selector handle to recenter as it was supposed to and he didn't get a landing gear extended cockpit indication. The pilot elected to return to the departure airport. The pilot performed a flyby past the air traffic control tower and the controller radioed that all three gear appeared to be down; however, the pilot's wife, in the right seat, told him she couldn't see a wheel on that side of the airplane. During the ensuing landing, the right main landing gear collapsed, the right wing contacted the runway, and the airplane veered off the runway to the right. The aircraft was delivered for the annual inspection with a landing gear extension discrepancy. A misrigging problem on the left main landing gear seemed to explain all of the symptoms and was repaired. The gear was satisfactorily cycled 10 times using an external hydraulic pressure source (mule). Inspection subsequent to the accident revealed that, although functional, the output of the engine-driven hydraulic pump was deficient and insufficient to operate the gear. The emergency hand pump and emergency gear extension system operated normally. The maintenance facility manager speculated that the reason the pilot was not able to extend the landing gear with the emergency hand pump was because he didn't first fully extend the handle. If the telescoping handle shaft is not fully extended the handle cannot be moved and feels similar to a "hydraulic lock."
Probable cause
The failure of maintenance personnel to properly diagnose the cause of a reported maintenance discrepancy resulting in the airplane being released from an annual inspection with a worn hydraulic pump which lacked sufficient output to operate the landing gear. Another cause was the pilot's improper execution of the landing gear emergency extension procedure by failing to fully extend the manual hydraulic pump handle prior to attempting emergency gear extension.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA027
- Event ID
- 20011120X02272
- Case number
- LAX02LA027
- 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 2001-11-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e728768d16675b39466e1f246c349234fc0d53995addc3a779a200307fb3d6f2; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:24:54.050Z.