CEN10FA520 · Cessna T210 N
Montgomery Bay Aviation Cessna T210 N · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV) to Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA520
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna T210 N
- 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
- N2081U
- Operator
- Montgomery Bay Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Vermilion Regional Airport (DNV), Danville, ILTo Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU), Georgetown, 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
- En route
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was in cruise flight at 6,700 feet mean sea level when the air traffic controller advised the pilot that a large area of heavy to extreme rain showers was ahead along his flight path for the next 180 miles. The pilot did not change course, and, about 6 minutes later, he requested a descent in order to remain operating under visual flight rules. About 4 minutes later, the controller lost radar contact with the airplane and tried to contact the pilot. There was no response. Witnesses on the ground reported that the airplane’s engine could be heard “revving up and down,” but the airplane could not be seen because of an overcast layer of clouds. Moments later the airplane appeared from the clouds and was observed descending in a nose down spiral. The witnesses added that, before the airplane descended out of sight, one of the wings “appeared to fold.” Postaccident examination indicated that the airplane experienced a positive overload failure of the left wing during the descent and subsequently broke apart. The examination revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions, anomalies, or failures before the wing separation that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to continue flight into a known area of heavy rain and his subsequent failure to maintain aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10FA520
- Event ID
- 20100907X72216
- Case number
- CEN10FA520
- 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: 2a32a0887099db081fbd65bdc6dcbb9b50a4c1eeec7142fc3f5c8580e446c4be; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:02:57.337Z.