Cessna P210 N6500W

Summary

On 30 August 2018 at about 03:35 local time, a Cessna P210 registered N6500W was involved in an accident near Prescott, Arizona, United States. One person was on board and one died. The aircraft was destroyed. The NTSB has published a probable cause for this accident; it is quoted in full below.

Date

30 August 2018 at 03:35

Classification

Accident

Location

Prescott, Arizona, United States

Nearest airport

Ernest A Love Field (PRC)

Coordinates

34.6700, -112.4058

Aircraft

Cessna P210

Registration

N6500W

Category

Airplane

Year built

1981

Engines

1

Operator

Not recorded

Operating rule

Part 91: General Aviation

Purpose of flight

Personal

Phase of flight

Not recorded

Route

Prescott → Prescott

Aircraft damage

Destroyed

Weather

VMC

Light

Night/Dark

NTSB number

WPR18FA245

1 person died.

The pilot's misjudgment of distance and altitude from the runway and his subsequent failure to maintain an approach path that provided clearance from the terrain due to a visual illusion in dark night conditions.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record. This site does not paraphrase or interpret it.

Read the full NTSB narrative

The purpose of the flight was for the pilot to acquire night currency by performing practice takeoffs and landings. He initially requested to takeoff and fly the traffic pattern for the longer, 150-ft wide runway (21L), but the ground controller replied that the traffic pattern was full and offered that the pilot could use the parallel, shorter 60-ft wide runway (21R). Once airborne, the pilot did not fly a traffic pattern that paralleled runway 21R on downwind and he overshot the final approach course on his base-to-final turn. The pilot subsequently corrected his track and became aligned for runway 21R, but airplane collided with desert terrain about 1,900 ft short of the destination runway, impacting in a near level-pitch attitude with the landing gear down. The airplane impacted a berm and shortly thereafter, was destroyed by a postcrash fire. Although visual meteorological conditions prevailed, no natural horizon and few external visual references were available during the visual approach in dark night conditions to judge height above terrain. The pilot's tasks during the approach included maintaining visual separation from the traffic on runway 21L and aligning with the much narrower runway 21R. The pilot’s collision with terrain short of the runway suggests that he was experiencing the runway width illusion in which the sight picture to a narrow runway during a nighttime approach can lead pilots to believe their approach path is too high and they descend in an attempt to correct. The runway had a precision approach path indicator (PAPI) system to help pilots maintain a safe glidepath at night. The pilot’s competing visual task demands including traffic and runway alignment and recency of nighttime experience may have contributed to his failure to heed this information. Examination of the recovered wreckage did not reveal evidence of any preexisting mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. Examination of the airplane's exhaust revealed a crack that would have likely been present during the most recent maintenance. However, although the heat exchanger contained voids, that was likely not an entry for the exhaust gases because the higher pressure of the ram air that is directed into the exchanger. Postmortem toxicology tests identified 35% carboxyhemoglobin (carbon monoxide) in the pilot's blood. The soot deposits in his airways suggests the elevated carbon monoxide was a postcrash effect rather than occurring before the airplane collided with the ground. Therefore, it is unlikely that the effects of carbon monoxide contributed to the accident. The circumstances of the accident suggest the pilot was actively flying the airplane, indicating he was not incapacitated at the time.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record.