WPR09CA129 · Cessna T210
Cessna T210 · Accident: hard landing
From Blythe Airport (BLH) to Bauer Airport (61CA)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location and departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA129
- 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 T210
- 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
- N210NS
- Operator
- Brooks L. and Patricia M. Bauer
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From Blythe Airport (BLH), Blythe Airport, CATo Bauer Airport (61CA), Twenty-Nine Palms, 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
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he made a normal approach, and on short final a gust of wind forced the airplane down to the ground. The airplane went into soft sand and nosed over. The pilot's passenger reported that prior to reaching the airport for landing, he felt some light turbulence. As the airplane was nearing touchdown he felt turbulence again, and heard the pilot say 'oh no.' The passenger reported that it felt as if the airplane was pushed straight down and the airplane impacted the ground short of the runway. A ground witness about 1/4 mile north of the runway watched as the airplane came in to land. As the airplane approached the runway he saw the tail move sideways and then straighten out; he thought that the wind must have caught it. As the airplane continued on the approach, it seemed normal; however, as it got close to the runway, the airplane appeared to drop suddenly as if it was being forced down by a gust of wind.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the gusting wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA129
- Event ID
- 20090225X24741
- Case number
- WPR09CA129
- 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: investigation status. 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: f61a3247dc7f9c297eaee88bbc8b0f090528ec0f13907f42e4ac7787b5357ec7; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:46:57.278Z.