ATL82FA059 · Cessna 210L
Cessna 210L · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) to 49J · Hilton Head, SC
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL82FA059
- 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 210L
- 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
- CGMYL
- Operator
- Les Production/Gil Talbot/N. L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), Chantilly, VATo 49J · Hilton Head, SC
- 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 handling, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE AIRCRAFT DEPARTED DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AT 1630 EST, NO FLIGHT PLAN WAS FILED. THE NEXT RADIO CONTACT WITH THE AIRCRAFT WAS BY BEAUFORT MARINE CORPS AIR STATION APPROACH CONTROL WHEN THE CONTROLLER TRANSMITTED THE ALTIMETER SETTING AND THE PILOT ACKNOWLEDGED. APPROXIMATELY 7 MINUTES LATER, THE PILOT REQUESTED AND RECEIVED VECTORS TO THE HILTON HEAD AIRPORT. AT 1947, THE PILOT WAS TOLD THAT HIS GYRO MIGHT BE ABOUT 30 DEGREES OFF AND WAS GIVEN A REVISED HEADING. APPROXIMATELY 2 MINUTES LATER, THE CONTROLLER TRANSMITTED "MIKE YANKEE LIMA, TURN RIGHT NOW, HEADING TWO FIVE ZERO". THE PILOT'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THAT STATEMENT WAS THE LAST TRANSMISSION RECEIVED FROM CGMYL. A SEARCH ENSUED, BUT NO MAJOR PIECES OF WRECKAGE WERE RECOVERED. A PLOT OF THE AIRCRAFT'S FLIGHT PATH REVEALED THAT ITS HEADING CHANGED BACK AND FORTH 5 TIMES IN THE LAST 2 MINUTES OF RECORDED FLIGHT. THREE PIECES OF WRECKAGE WASHED UP ON SHORE. ALL WERE IDENTIFIED AS BELONGING TO A CESSNA 210.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL82FA059
- Event ID
- 20020917X01729
- Case number
- ATL82FA059
- 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 1982-02-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: c72d9f0715267656e12c5080eab91b42487059ceb71108a70945b5ccbbe9f6ff; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:36:19.184Z.