LAX06CA084 · Cessna T206H
Cessna T206H · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX) to Palo Alto Airport (PAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA084
- 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 T206H
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 206
- 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
- N531HP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX), Santa Maria, CATo Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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 › Proper alignment, not maintained
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 collided with multiple airport objects during the landing flare. While in the traffic pattern for landing the pilot was not able to lower the flaps. During the landing flare, the pilot lost sight of the runway, and allowed the airplane to drift off the runway, where it collided with an airport sign and runway lights. He performed a go-around, and was not able to determine the extent of the damage. He elected to divert to another area airport with longer and wider runways. The pilot made a no flap landing at the alternate airport. Maintenance personnel reported that the right rear passenger door has a door/flap limit switch, so that when the door is ajar or open, the flaps cannot be lowered. The system was functionally tested and found to operate normally. It was determined that the right rear passenger was leaning against the door, and deactivated the door/flap limit switch. No further discrepancies were noted.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain proper runway alignment, which resulted in a collision with multiple objects.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA084
- Event ID
- 20060210X00192
- Case number
- LAX06CA084
- 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: 4218b805c25d9be8708ea7ef506dfb6c7360f365ec2fbc73e708cfd36e706980; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:09:59.144Z.