WPR18LA058 · Cessna 210 J
Cessna 210 J · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) before flight
From Chino Airport (CNO) to San Bernardino International Airport (SBD)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA058
- 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 J
- 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
- N222AT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo San Bernardino International Airport (SBD), San Bernardino, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1968)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was at a maintenance facility for an annual inspection, which had not been completed, and the airplane had not been returned to an airworthy condition. Despite this, the private pilot picked up his airplane from the maintenance facility to fly it to his base airport. While in the traffic pattern, the pilot lowered the main landing gear (MLG) but noted that the left MLG was not fully extended. The pilot attempted to manually extend the MLG to no avail and subsequently landed the airplane with the left MLG retracted.
Postaccident examination of the left MLG revealed that the saddle assembly had fractured. The assembly was removed for metallurgical examination, which revealed that the saddle fracture surfaces exhibited features consistent with fatigue.
An airworthiness directive (AD) required that the MLG saddles be inspected for cracks using the dye-penetrant procedure as part of the annual inspection. The mechanic who was conducting the annual inspection reported that he had not inspected the landing gear before the pilot took the airplane and that he had informed the pilot that the annual inspection was not complete and that he was not signing the airplane off as airworthy. It is likely that, if the AD had been complied with and the pilot had not taken the airplane before the annual inspection was complete, the preexisting crack would likely have been identified during the inspection of the MLG saddles.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the left main landing gear (MLG) saddle, which resulted in the pilot's inability to extend the left MLG. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper decision to fly the airplane before the annual inspection was completed and the airplane returned to service in an airworthy condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA058
- Event ID
- 20171230X01728
- Case number
- WPR18LA058
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-12-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 43fa1b8669d8183b67df7929a1ddd464b040649de4872649327d8f42fe4822f5; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:14:54.093Z.