Cessna 210 N9776Y accident near Mount Vernon, Illinois

Probable cause

The pilot’s failure to lower the landing gear, resulting in a wheel up landing. Contributing to the accident was the intermittent warning horn which likely did not sound to warn the pilot about the misconfigured landing gear.

NTSB analysis

The pilot reported that as the airplane approached the airport to land, he found that the runway he had planned to land on was closed, so he maneuvered to land on an open runway. He forgot to extend the landing gear and wheels up landed the airplane on its belly. The airplane skidded on its belly to a stop, which resulted in substantial damage to the primary structure of the underside of fuselage. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures that contributed to the accident, but also reported that neither he nor the passenger heard the landing gear warning horn during the approach. During the functional testing of the landing gear system, the landing gear warning horn was found to be intermittent.

Text from the NTSB. Open the NTSB docket for CEN24LA264 for the full record.