ATL02FA025 · Cessna C-210N
Cessna C-210N · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Peter O Knight Airport (TPF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02FA025
- 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
- 1 · 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 C-210N
- Aircraft type
- Cessna C-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
- N139JP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Peachtree, GATo Peter O Knight Airport (TPF), Tampa, FL
- 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 · climb to 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the pilot radioed to air traffic controllers that he was experiencing "trim problems." According to the controllers, he was not specific as to the nature of the problem. The airplane collided with trees and subsequently the ground in a residential area, and was consumed by a post-crash fire. The cabin, flight controls and instruments were all fire damaged. Flight control cable continuity was established from the cockpit to both the elevator and rudder systems. The elevator trim tab control cables were observed separated in a tension type separation near the pulleys at aft fuselage. The cables changed from a forward/aft orientation to an inboard/outboard orientation at these pulleys. The aileron cables were cut during the recovery and continuity could not be established. Examination of the wreckage found no pre-existing structural or mechanical problems.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02FA025
- Event ID
- 20020103X00008
- Case number
- ATL02FA025
- 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: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9b92e2d0ad16d78fc8c115aa93eb35f1037975d112dd5bf4a093ad82249447de; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:15:31.217Z.