WPR18LA057 · Cessna T210L M
Cessna T210L M · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE) to Aurora State Airport (KUAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA057
- 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 T210L M
- 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
- N2122S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seattle Paine Field International Airport (PAE), Everett, WATo Aurora State Airport (KUAO), Aurora, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1975)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 private pilot was conducting a cross-country flight. He reported that, while on the downwind leg preparing to land, he activated the landing gear extension lever but that the green DOWN and LOCKED light did not illuminate. The pilot thought that the landing gear was down but performed a fly-by near the air traffic control tower so that the controller could verify the position of the gear. The controller told the pilot that the landing gear appeared to be down. The controller then cleared the pilot for a second downwind approach and landing. The pilot stated that, while preparing to land a second time, he attempted to raise and lower the landing gear, but the green DOWN and LOCKED light again did not illuminate. The pilot looked in the airplane's landing gear mirror and saw that the gear appeared to be in the down position. During the landing roll, the right main landing gear collapsed, which resulted in substantial damage on the right side of the airplane. The pilot indicated that he had forgotten to perform the alternate landing gear extension procedure before landing, which is used when the gear will not lock into the down position.
A postaccident examination of the landing gear system, which included multiple gear retraction and extension cycles with the gear locked, revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The right main landing gear collapsed because it did not lock into place, most likely due to the overcenter drag brace not fully attaining the overcenter position.
Probable cause
A collapse of the right main landing gear during the landing roll because the gear would not lock into place. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to perform the alternate landing gear extension procedure before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA057
- Event ID
- 20180102X44607
- Case number
- WPR18LA057
- 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: e0fc3dac362925b241cd0d9ea803d20b868833ce334a25e4f0dcacd0f531b5dd; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:15:23.476Z.