IAD04LA011 · Cessna 210E
Cessna 210E · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Greene County Airport (WAY) to Allegheny County Airport (AGC)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04LA011
- 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 210E
- 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
- N4974U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greene County Airport (WAY), Waynesburg, PATo Allegheny County Airport (AGC), Pittsburgh, PA
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, compliance with ad, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to a landing, the left main landing gear would not extend into a down and locked position. The pilot, who was also the airplane's owner and mechanic, landed with the right main and nose landing gear in the down and locked position, and the left main landing gear "hanging." Upon landing, the left main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane slid off the left side of the runway. A post-accident examination revealed that the left main landing gear saddle was fractured. The landing gear saddle was the subject of an Airworthiness Directive that first required its replacement, and after 1,200 hours of service on the new part, annual dye-penetrant inspections. A review of the airframe logbook revealed that the saddle was replaced, and that annual inspections should have begun in 1986; however, there were no records that they had ever been performed. Laboratory examination of the saddle fracture revealed features consistent with fatigue, and there was a lack of dye penetrant on the part.
Probable cause
The owner/pilot-mechanic's failure to comply with an airworthiness directive, which resulted in a fatigue fracture to the left main landing gear saddle.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04LA011
- Event ID
- 20040224X00227
- Case number
- IAD04LA011
- 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: 9eff15929827fda29de5913a0eaa8a4d4073655ca56fd294573930f2bee6b578; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:56:59.467Z.