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SEA08LA028 · Cessna 210L

16 Nov 2007 · Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Cessna 210L · Accident: gear collapsed during landing

From Chino Airport (CNO) to Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA)

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Event

NTSB case
SEA08LA028
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 210L

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
N987M
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, 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 · 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
Gear collapsed
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, gear switch › Bent

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 landing the pilot confirmed that the landing gear was down and locked. During the landing roll the airplane began to veer left, followed by the left main landing gear collapsing. The airplane came to rest upright on the left side of the runway with its left elevator resting on the runway's surface. A post-accident examination revealed that the left main landing gear down limit switch plunger was bent and stuck in the closed position, falsely indicating that the left main landing gear was locked [down]. The examination further revealed that the two hydraulic hoses to the downlock actuator were making contact with the airplane's skin, binding the downlock from fully opening to allow the down limit switch to clear the striker plate during the down cycle. The two hoses were subsequently repositioned to eliminate the binding, which resulted in the landing gear operating normally. It was not determined how the switch had become bent. The pilot reported no anomalies with the airplane prior to the flight.

Probable cause

The left main landing gear's down limit switch plunger being bent and stuck in the closed position, which resulted in the collapse of the landing gear during the landing roll. The reason for the down limit switch plunger being bent could not be determined.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record SEA08LA028
Event ID
20071121X01828
Case number
SEA08LA028
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: ace4a4689f01c5e20ceb08105a15fe44c9f6533865209bd27f2f52343930a491; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:16:24.734Z.