DFW08FA038 · Cessna T210M
Cessna T210M · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Tulsa Riverside Airport (KRVS) to Bill & Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field (KLIT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08FA038
- 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
- 2 · 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 T210M
- 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
- N3NG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa Riverside Airport (KRVS), Tulsa, OKTo Bill & Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field (KLIT), Little Rock, AR
- 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 · climb to 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Separation
- Pilot in command › Altitude, low
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot who had just purchased the accident aircraft earlier in the day, departed on a night cross-country flight with two passengers on-board. Shortly after departure, the pilot radioed that he was having electrical problems and he needed to return to the airport. On the airplane's approach to the runway, the airplane impacted the top of a tree, traveled southward before contacting a wire/cable, then impacted the ground coming to rest inverted. A witness reported that the accident airplane was, "very low on approach", and it appeared that the airplane had "no electrical power, and that the engine was at a low rpm." The witness also reported that it was hard to tell if [the engine] was losing power completely." The airplane was examined on-site, and during the examination it was found that the main lead (wire) to the alternator had separated from the alternator. The alternator wire and the insulated terminal end had disconnected with the terminal ring remaining on the alternator. Further inspection of the terminal ring and wire revealed that the terminal had a single pointed style crimp, and the (multi-strand) wire-end that had separated from the terminal ring appeared "weathered." The on-site examination of the aircraft did not reveal any additional pre-impact mechanical anomalies. An additional test on the engine was conducted at the engine manufacturer’s test cell facility. The engine was started and run for several minutes at various (idle to full) power settings. Several engine runs were conducted. During the tests, the engine was able to produce rated horsepower.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the power transmission line(s). Contributing to the accident were the loss of aircraft electrical power, diverted attention, and the night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08FA038
- Event ID
- 20071130X01879
- Case number
- DFW08FA038
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2007-11-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 743b50bd988c8fbb408aebe10a6db809f29fda74e277a2ac9f7d169a31748fa8; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:04:55.763Z.