ATL04LA035 · Cessna 210D
Cessna 210D · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during an emergency descent
From Dyersburg Regional Airport (DYR) to Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA035
- 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 210D
- 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
- N3728Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dyersburg Regional Airport (DYR), Dyersburg, TNTo Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA), Millington, TN
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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 › Malfunction
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 stated that he was conducting touch and go landings at an airport when he observed an unsafe landing gear indication after attempting to lower the landing gear. The emergency gear extension checklist was followed and the landing gear would not come down. He diverted to another airport and contacted the control tower. A fly-by was requested and the controller informed the pilot that the nose gear was extended, however the main landing gear was not extended. The pilot entered the traffic pattern and made an emergency landing to the sod area left of runway 04. The landing gear actuator was forwarded to an authorized repair station for further examination. The examination revealed the actuator was in the partially extended position during the gear up landing. The repair station confirmed the hydraulic pump was functioning, and the landing gear actuator was in the partially extended position during the gear up landing. The teardown concluded, "It is our professional opinion, based on non-teardown of the unit that the power pack would have functioned and sequenced as designed; however, there is serious question as to the ability of the main gear actuators to overcome the flight loads if operated at 60 percent (fluctuating between 750 psi and 900 psi) of designed system pressure (required to be at 1950 plus or minus 50 psi.")
Probable cause
The malfunction of the main hydraulic landing gear system actuator resulting in an emergency gear up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA035
- Event ID
- 20031112X01882
- Case number
- ATL04LA035
- 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: 25e9ed0c704c76b7f384ab3af1fd1f3cf9ce7d3d882671d9d77fae16f057cd13; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:11:41.439Z.