CEN15CA049 · Cessna 210 K
Cessna 210 K · Accident: landing gear not configured
From Branch County Memorial Airport (OEB) to Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15CA049
- 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 210 K
- 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
- N8219M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Branch County Memorial Airport (OEB), Coldwater, MITo Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport (AZO), Kalamazoo, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 45 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
- 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 not configured
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of a retractable landing gear airplane reported that during dusk conditions, five nautical miles from the destination airport, he extended the landing gear. He further reported, that at touchdown the airplane started to shake. He allowed the airplane to slow down then applied brakes; the left main landing gear folded back into the fuselage, the airplane skidded down the runway, veered off the runway to the left, and impacted a runway exit sign.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the empennage.
In a statement provided to the National Transportation Safety Board by the airplane mechanic that assisted in the recovery of the accident airplane, he reported that the accident airplane was lifted off of the surface of the runway, the left main landing gear was put into the down position and the up-lock hook which secures the landing gear in the down and locked position, "went into position with no problem." He further reported that he placed the airplane on jacks, cycled the landing gear through several cycles and the landing gear locked into position during each cycle.
In the section of the National Transportation Safety Board Pilot/Operator Accident/Incident Report form titled Mechanical Malfunction/Failure, the pilot reported that during the postaccident repair of the airplane, the selector-main gear actuator (part No. 12810044) gear tooth was revealed to have been broken.
According to the manufacture, the landing gear could have been extended with the broken gear actuator tooth, however once the landing gear had been extend, locked, and weight apply, the only way for the landing gear to unseat from the landing gear pocket is through a positive action by the pilot.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that the landing gear was fully extended in the down and locked position prior to touchdown, which resulted in the left main landing gear collapse, runway excursion, and impact with a runway exit sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15CA049
- Event ID
- 20141118X00341
- Case number
- CEN15CA049
- 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: 40a163a4a2fa942b3282fcbc6f60d3d4b01b33cd8f2fbbed7254f2b23d6de8ea; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:56:04.593Z.