DEN03LA118 · Cessna 210K
Cessna 210K · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Central Nebraska Regional Airport (GRI) to Animas Air Park (00C)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA118
- 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
- N8264M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Central Nebraska Regional Airport (GRI), Grand Island, NETo Animas Air Park (00C), Durango, CO
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he was making a right-hand traffic pattern for landing on runway 01. The pilot said as he was coming in, his altitude was high. The pilot said, "I put on full flaps and [the] descent increased to the point [that] I decided to go around. The plane continued to descend and the stall horn started to sound." The pilot raised the flaps to 10 degrees and then bounced off the runway. The pilot said a crosswind turned his airplane toward a hangar. The pilot said he turned the airplane back toward the runway, but "it wouldn't fly and fell to the ground." An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies. At the time of the accident, the winds recorded at the Durango-La Plata County Airport, 120 degrees at 7 miles from the accident site were 270 degrees at 18 knots, gusting to 21 knots. The density altitude was determined as 9,942 feet msl.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision and his failure to maintain aircraft control. Factors contributing to the accident were the high altitude on base turn and final approach, the low airspeed, the pilot's improper use of flaps, the inadvertent stall, the pilot's failure to recover from the bounced landing, the gusting crosswinds, and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA118
- Event ID
- 20030707X01019
- Case number
- DEN03LA118
- 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: 183abbc9f684c71a2698e236544594b9b287f7d40c9a10a73964e9a99a54c989; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:26:05.587Z.