ERA21LA147 · Cessna P210N
Beta Air Cessna P210N · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV) to Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA147
- 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
- 0
- 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 P210N
- 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
- N4629K
- Operator
- Beta Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV), Burlington, VTTo Henderson Oxford Airport (HNZ), Oxford, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 42 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 30 minutes after climbing to 10,000 ft above mean sea level, the pilot began hearing “an unfamiliar buzzing or humming noise” that became increasingly louder. After attempting to troubleshoot the issue, he decided to divert to an airport along his route. Soon after, he smelled “electrical fumes” and noted smoke in the cockpit. He diverted to the nearest suitable airport for a precautionary landing and the landing gear collapsed during the landing roll. The airplane skidded on the runway and tipped to the left, substantially damaging the left elevator.
The pilot stated that he and a mechanic examined the airplane after the accident and noted that the circuit breaker for the hydraulic pump had popped and a hose near the hydraulic power pack assembly, which contains the hydraulic pump, was partially melted. They then removed the hydraulic power pack. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector subsequently oversaw a postaccident examination of the airplane. The examination revealed that hydraulic pump motor assembly displayed signatures and had an odor consistent with being overheated. Due to the hydraulic power pack being previously removed by the pilot and mechanic, the hydraulic fluid level could not be determined, and no further testing was possible to isolate malfunctions of the hydraulic pump assembly.
The pilot reported that although he visually verified that the landing gear was down before the landing, he did not observe the landing gear position indicator and verify that they were locked in the down position before landing. Had he performed this action, he could have recognized this condition before the subsequent landing gear collapse, and it is possible that he could have taken the appropriate steps to manually complete the landing gear extension cycle.
Probable cause
A failure of the landing gear system hydraulic pump assembly for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence. Contributing was the pilot’s failure to confirm that the landing gear was down and locked before landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA147
- Event ID
- 20210304102710
- Case number
- ERA21LA147
- 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, cause areas. 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: f90d43efdc3ade008b9510c0600bf56560dfbe3a1873b23d8e1d7204d3311620; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:46:17.344Z.