CEN19FA021 · Cessna 210 N
Cessna 210 N · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Clark County Airport (8D7) to The Sigurd Anderson Airport (1D7)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA021
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 210 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
- N81KD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clark County Airport (8D7), Clark, SDTo The Sigurd Anderson Airport (1D7), Webster, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1981)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated pilot was conducting a cross-country personal flight. Earlier on the morning of the accident, the pilot had diverted from his intended destination airport because of poor weather there. After waiting at the diversion airport for about 1.5 hours, the pilot decided to attempt the 35-mile flight to the destination airport. During taxi, the pilot called a friend to ask about weather conditions close to the destination airport, and the friend advised the pilot that "pretty low clouds" existed.
The pilot departed and remained at a low altitude until about 3 minutes before the accident, when air traffic control radar captured the airplane's altitude at 800 ft above ground level (agl). During the last minute of recorded data, the airplane made a climbing left turn of about 90° from an altitude of 1,000 to 2,100 ft agl and slowed from a groundspeed of 144 to 106 knots. A witness near the accident site heard what sounded to be an airplane climbing and descending twice, which was followed by the sound of a "loud bang." The airplane impacted terrain with a nose-down attitude at high speed, and a postcrash fire ensued. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Even though the available evidence indicated that the pilot did not request a weather briefing or receive weather information from a vendor, the pilot should have known, before the start of the flight, that instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) would likely exist near his destination based on the information that his friend provided. The weather conditions at the closest official reporting station to the accident site during the time surrounding the accident indicated a 500-ft cloud ceiling and reduced visibility due to mist, and AIRMETs that were valid for the accident location and time indicated that instrument flight rules conditions existed. This information confirmed that the accident airplane was in IMC at the time of the accident.
On a previous flight, the pilot had intentionally flown into IMC conditions with the autopilot on. The pilot's decision to fly along a route with low ceilings and his subsequent entry into IMC conditions most likely resulted in the pilot becoming spatially disoriented, which led to a steep dive and ground impact.
Probable cause
The non-instrument-rated pilot's improper decision to conduct a flight in which instrument meteorological conditions existed along the route of flight, which resulted in spatial disorientation and a loss of airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19FA021
- Event ID
- 20181102X60757
- Case number
- CEN19FA021
- 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: fc54c274ec3dad1c67aa5849446e1675cbc99d223d0b0de7f1812c81f72d1ba8; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:50:22.074Z.