ERA10CA165 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to Miami Executive Airport (TMB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10CA165
- 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 P210N
- 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
- N34VF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo Miami Executive Airport (TMB), Miami, FL
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing, the pilot taxied toward a fixed based operator facility during night visual meteorological conditions. As he entered a general aviation parking ramp, the right main landing gear struck an unlit and unmarked helicopter dolly. The right landing gear collapsed, the right wing deformed during the contact with pavement, and a fuel leak resulted. The pilot reported that he did not see the dolly prior to the collision, and that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane. The pilot and the Federal Aviation Administration inspector who responded to the accident reported that the helicopter dolly was unlit and unmarked.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to see and avoid an unlit and unmarked helicopter dolly while taxiing at night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10CA165
- Event ID
- 20100306X65115
- Case number
- ERA10CA165
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-03-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 65cdf7c287e49533ba1dd16ff813b6dca00191d707d37ca768e276cae368af58; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:43:23.775Z.