LAX06FA043 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM) to John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06FA043
- 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
- 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 T210N
- 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
- N546BC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brown Field Municipal Airport (SDM), San Diego, CATo John Wayne Orange County International Airport (SNA), Santa Ana, 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
- 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
- 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/spin
- 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 control, not possible
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(cardiovascular)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted the ocean following a departure from controlled cruise flight. The airplane had decelerated from 120 knots to approximately 60 knots while maintaining an altitude of 3,500 feet mean sea level (msl), then descended as rapidly as 7,000 feet per minute, finally spiraling toward the ocean in a corkscrew manner before it impacted the water. No pre-accident anomalies were noted with any systems examined, and no distress calls or communications preceded or followed the upset. The autopsy report on the 51-year-old airline transport pilot was consistent with a condition known as left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), a substantially thickened main heart chamber. It also noted moderate to severe coronary artery disease with evidence of at least one prior small heart attack. The combination of coronary artery disease and LVH would have substantially increased the risk for sudden cardiac death in this pilot. There was no evidence that the pilot was aware of his heart disease. The behavior of the aircraft cannot be explained by any reasonable scenario in which the 11,500-hour pilot was deliberately controlling the aircraft. Therefore, it seems likely that the pilot was unable to control the aircraft, an inability that can reasonably be explained by an incapacitating cardiac event.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain aircraft control, which resulted in a loss of airspeed and a stall/spin. The inability of the pilot to maintain control of the airplane was likely due to an incapacitating cardiac event.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06FA043
- Event ID
- 20051123X01882
- Case number
- LAX06FA043
- 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: 8e6f55fed026562a62d539d7d89b2632f91bfb52fd5d2fa62b56fce181d5c643; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:45:21.476Z.