DFW08CA047 · Cessna 210
Cessna 210 · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Lea County Regional Airport (HOB) to Medford, OK
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08CA047
- 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 210
- 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
- N5957F
- Operator
- Don Kirby
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lea County Regional Airport (HOB), Hobbs, NMTo Medford, OK
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot attempted a night landing on an unlighted runway. Prior to landing, he said he tried to activate the runway lights, but was unable to turn the lights on. The pilot noted that since there was moonlight and he was familiar with the airport; he elected to land without the runway lights. He reported that he thought he could see the runway, and that he was on the runway, until "he felt the nose-wheel sink." The airplane came to rest inverted. An inspection of the runway lighting system revealed that the lights were not functioning properly.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to attempt a night landing without runway lighting. A contributing factor was inoperative runway lights.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08CA047
- Event ID
- 20080128X00112
- Case number
- DFW08CA047
- 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 2007-12-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e30bdf11e73b466f013ba7e520611abdbe58d57b9d021eb533d679bc4a10ae8f; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:13:32.377Z.