DEN08LA021 · Cessna T210K
Cessna T210K · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM) to Los Alamos Airport (LAM)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA021
- 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 T210K
- 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
- N8251M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cavern City Air Terminal (CNM), Carlsbad, NMTo Los Alamos Airport (LAM), Los Alamos, NM
- 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
- 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
- Landing gear, nose gear › Binding(mechanical)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot's statement, during his approach to Los Alamos, he attempted to extend the landing gear. During the gear extension, the pilot noted that "something did not sound right, and [I] did not get a gear down indication in the cockpit." The pilot cycled the landing gear approximately "10 to 15 times in various speeds, power settings, g-loads, and attitudes" with no result. The pilot attempted to extend the landing gear manually, again with no result. The pilot then decided to fly the airplane to the airport in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which has a control tower, and have the tower controllers visually verify that the landing gear was down. The tower controller at Santa Fe advised the pilot that the airplane's nose landing gear was not extended and the nose gear doors were closed. After several more unsuccessful attempts to troubleshoot the problem, the pilot returned to Los Alamos and landed the airplane with the nose gear retracted, resulting in substantial damage. The airplane was examined and the landing gear was operated by a FAA inspector. During the first gear extension the nose landing gear unlocked, but the nose landing gear doors did not open. A mechanic pushed lightly on the gear doors and they came open, and the nose landing gear came down and locked. Subsequent cycles of the landing gear could not duplicate the problem.
Probable cause
The binding of the nose landing gear doors for undetermined reasons, resulting in the pilot having to make a nose gear up landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA021
- Event ID
- 20071101X01699
- Case number
- DEN08LA021
- 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: f7bdf7fba97ad21fbe2c9087eb096e27bbf6bbd3b9ef8127e8559fe0d0323017; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:18:36.573Z.