LAX03TA048 · Cessna T210L
San Diego Air and Marine Branch Cessna T210L · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From North Island Naval Air Station-Halsey Field (NZY) to Agua Dulce Airpark (L70)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03TA048
- 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 T210L
- 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
- N732HJ
- Operator
- San Diego Air and Marine Branch
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Island Naval Air Station-Halsey Field (NZY), San Diego, CATo Agua Dulce Airpark (L70), Agua Caliente, 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Hydraulic system, actuator › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and commercial pilot were practicing landings on a hard-surfaced runway. During the accident landing roll, the airplane's right main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane veered off the runway. Prior to touchdown, the flight instructor stated that he verified that the landing gear were in the down position, with all three gear down indicators illuminated. Postaccident inspection of the landing gear mechanism disclosed that the left main landing gear and the nose gear were fully extended; the right main landing gear was almost fully retracted. Examination of the right main landing gear actuator revealed that it had bulged and cracked along the axis of the hydraulic cylinder. The fracture surfaces of the crack were indicative of overload facture, with no evidence of fatigue cracks.
Probable cause
The failure of the right main landing gear actuator during the landing roll, which resulted in a collapse of the right main land gear, and loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03TA048
- Event ID
- 20021213X05607
- Case number
- LAX03TA048
- 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. 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: 9368d4e8c00d036bc5a14170974ba01edb9432f2ecdf797dbdd493a5af447068; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:49:25.036Z.