DFW08FA061 · Cessna 210
Cessna 210 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA) to West Houston Airport (IWS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08FA061
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N968CC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA), New Iberia, LATo West Houston Airport (IWS), Houston, TX
- 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
- Maneuvering
- Defining eventThe 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated private pilot was on a 197-nautical mile cross-country flight. Weather forecast for the route of flight was for marginal weather conditions and visual flight rules (VFR) was not recommended. A review of the airplane's radar track shows the airplane's approach from the east, heading westbound. At about 1830 the airplane initiated a descent from 6,500 feet. Prior to disappearing from radar at 1844, the airplane made a single, descending "S" turn, beginning at an altitude of 2400 feet, and ending at the last radar plot at 1,100 feet. A witness, near the crash site, reported that the weather at the time of the crash was extremely foggy, with visibility less than a tenth of a mile. The accident pilot stated to an air traffic controller that he needed to perform a 180-degree turn, because he was not able to get [down through the weather]. The airplane's ground impact created approximately a 16-foot long, 7-foot wide, and 30-inch deep crater in the ground. The airplane was fragmented, with pieces of the airplane scattered along the wreckage path. Near the start of the wreckage path, several angular cuts were found on tree branches. Additionally, patches of vegetation near the initial impact area displayed signs of fuel contamination. An examination of the airplane failed to identify any pre-impact abnormalities with the aircraft. Analysis of the radar data, the pilot's air traffic control communication and the fragmentation of the airplane is consistent with an in-flight loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control after flying into clouds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08FA061
- Event ID
- 20080219X00205
- Case number
- DFW08FA061
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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 2008-02-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0490470b5ad1da733a0e0766f0c74efa422e5b6194e53aa9f859ac4f31a990a9; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:55:50.269Z.