CEN18LA345 · Cessna T210 N
Cessna T210 N · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure during initial climb
From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS) to McAllen Miller International Airport (MFE)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA345
- 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 T210 N
- 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
- N6958N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Tulsa, OKTo McAllen Miller International Airport (MFE), McAllen, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had been sitting on a ramp for 3-4 months before the accident flight. The pilot initially could not start the engine due to a discharged battery but then departed on a cross-country flight after a ground unit was used to start the airplane. After takeoff, the pilot noticed that the radios became silent. He started to troubleshoot the loss of radio communications with no success. He set up to return to the airport and land on the runway. The pilot tried to deploy the flaps and landing gear, but there was no indication that either extended. He stated that he checked to see if the landing gear extended by using the wing-mounted mirrors. The pilot continued the approach. During the landing rollout, the pilot applied right rudder and brakes, but the airplane rolled off the runway into the grass. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed a collapsed left main landing gear. No mechanical anomalies were noted with the landing gear, and the battery was discharged. It is likely that the discharged battery affected the landing gear extension system. However, it could not be determined if the landing gear collapsed during the accident sequence or if it was not completely extended before landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to take off with a known electrical problem, which resulted in the loss of electrical power, problem with the landing gear extension system, and subsequent runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA345
- Event ID
- 20180821X92546
- Case number
- CEN18LA345
- 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: 7b4ec7afa590adb86396cfbb4fde8eaff552c9929e583b04eb9a045c15af9f00; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:08:06.457Z.