CEN17FA132 · Cessna 210B
Cessna 210B · Accident: loss of control in flight
From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) to Faith Municipal Airport (D07)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17FA132
- 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
- 1 · 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 210B
- 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
- N9581X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SDTo Faith Municipal Airport (D07), Faith, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1961)
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was making a personal cross-country flight to return the airplane to the airport where it was normally stored after the completion of an annual inspection. The route of flight passed near a grass airstrip that was adjacent to the pilot's ranch home, and the wreckage was located about 275 yards from the northwest end of the airstrip. No witnesses to the accident were identified, and it could not be determined whether the pilot was performing a low pass or had attempted a landing at the airstrip.
Examination of the accident site indicated that the airplane impacted terrain in a nose-low attitude. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures.
Although the reported wind at an airport about 19 miles from the accident site was from 360° at 16 knots, the wind at an airport 53 miles from the accident site was from 320° at 34 knots with gusts to 40 knots. Additionally, weather modeling identified the potential for moderate low-level wind shear (LLWS) and moderate clear air turbulence within about 100 ft of the ground, and the potential for light LLWS from 100 to 500 ft above the ground. Therefore, it is possible that the airplane encountered LLWS and turbulence that contributed to a loss of control. Further, the pilot had severe coronary artery disease, which placed him at increased risk of a cardiovascular event that may have resulted in impairment or incapacitation. The investigation was not able to determine if adverse weather conditions or an acute cardiac event contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of airplane control for reasons that could not be determined due to a lack of evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17FA132
- Event ID
- 20170317X82510
- Case number
- CEN17FA132
- 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, coordinates. 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: 728593cbc51de644f162f079f5eabacb86d2116b3dc6fdf1d31dbf1d749bea7f; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:00:03.623Z.