ERA13LA398 · Cessna 210J
Cessna 210J · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF) to Page Field (FMY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA398
- 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 210J
- 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
- N210WS
- Operator
- Olin David G
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), Opa Locka, FLTo Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1969)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the airplane had been experiencing landing gear problems before the most recent annual inspection in April 2013 but that he thought that the landing gear problems had stopped after that inspection and maintenance. During departure, the landing gear failed to retract, and the amber light indicating that the landing gear fully retracted did not illuminate. After the pilot cycled the landing gear, the landing gear retracted, the amber light illuminated, and he continued the flight. The pilot stated that, as he neared his destination, he placed the landing gear handle in the "down" position and felt the "clunk" associated with the landing gear locking into place. He added that he quickly checked his wing mirror and confirmed that the landing gear were down before landing and that the green landing gear down-and-locked light "appeared" to be illuminated on the landing gear console. (The wing mirror can only show the position of the nose landing gear.) The airplane subsequently landed without the main landing gear down-and-locked, slid down the runway, and departed its left side. The left main landing gear hydraulic down lock was not in the locked position. A witness, who was also a mechanic, stated that, when the airplane arrived at the airport, he saw the main landing gear trailing aft during landing but that the nose landing gear were down-and-locked. He asked the pilot if he had looked out his left window to visually inspect the left main landing gear and verify that it was down. The pilot replied that he did not think of that and that no one had ever showed him that.
Examinations determined that the hydraulic power pack that operates the functions of the landing gear was past its useful life and needed to be overhauled. The O-rings within the apparatus were malfunctioning and not providing the pressure needed to lock the main landing gear in the down position. If the pilot had looked out the window to visually verify the position of the main landing gear, he likely would have noticed that it was not in the correct position, and he could have accomplished emergency checklists that might have allowed the main landing gear to lock in the down position.
Probable cause
The failure of the landing gear hydraulic power pack system to provide sufficient pressure to lock the main landing gear in the down position. Contributing to the accident was the improper maintenance and inspection of the landing gear system, the pilot’s continued operation of the airplane with a known mechanical problem with the landing gear system, and the pilot’s failure to visually verify that the landing gear were down.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA398
- Event ID
- 20130905X52908
- Case number
- ERA13LA398
- 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: 96e1e1587d93a57ce4686d763d4bbbef6b0072ac11da365406208b73e7b57c2d; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:45:46.235Z.