LAX02LA053 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA053
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna T210N
- 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
- N7AL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, CATo not recorded
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- IFR procedure › Improper
- Pilot in command › Missed approach, not performed
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane landed long and continued off the end of the runway into a chain link fence. Nighttime darkness prevailed and the airport weather, observed 3 minutes after the accident, was visibility 1/4 statute mile, vertical visibility 100 feet, with temperature and dew point both 9 degrees Celsius. A sheriff's deputy reported from the accident site that the visibility was 50 to 100 yards in fog. The pilot reported that the accident occurred as he was returning to the departure airport following a 40-minute post maintenance checkflight. He received the airport weather from the Automatic Terminal Information Service (ATIS) recording and was aware that ground fog had developed at the airport. He received air traffic clearance and executed the instrument landing system (ILS) approach. At decision height he was still in visual meteorological conditions and the runway and approach lighting were in sight. The pilot continued his descent below decision height by visual reference and encountered dense fog and severe restriction to visibility at 50 to 75 feet above ground level. The pilot did not feel a go-around was possible at that point and continued the landing approach, landing long on the runway and continuing off the end.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to land on the runway with sufficient runway remaining as a result of his improper IFR procedure by his failure to maintain visual contact with the runway environment, and to execute a missed approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA053
- Event ID
- 20011227X02448
- Case number
- LAX02LA053
- 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 2001-12-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3caee7306cc7d686e16185fae5c5fc0aadb0f97eee94be707a5b9762bdaacfa6; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:14:03.955Z.