MIA99LA081 · Cessna 210G
Red Baron Aviation Cessna 210G · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From XO5 · Brooksville, FL to Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99LA081
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 210G
- 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
- N5874F
- Operator
- Red Baron Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From XO5 · Brooksville, FLTo Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), OPA LOCKA, FL
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fatigue
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Separation
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lake Placid, FL, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to position the airplane at the Miami's Opa Locka Airport. At an altitude of 5,000 feet agl under radar control, the pilot heard a 'snap/thud, followed by a popping noise,' and subsequent engine and propeller stoppage. An airborne restart was unsuccessful, and the propeller would not turn. The pilot realized he could not make it safely to an airport, and landed the airplane in a pasture. The airplane struck a tree, separating the left wing from the airframe. The nose and right main landing gear collided with a gully causing them to separate. According to the operator's records the subject engine was remanufactured by Continental Motors on December 9, 1997, and had 1622.9 hours of operating time since it was installed. The crankshaft was examined at the NTSB Materials Laboratory, and revealed that the crankshaft separated due to a fatigue crack that originated from the aft fillet radius of the No. 2 main journal. The fatigue area contained circumferential gouge marks and heat damage that was consistent with a bearing shell that had rotated or shifted. The bearing shell from the No. 1 rod journal also contained wear damage on the aft and forward edges that were consistent with shifting during engine operation.
Probable cause
a total loss of engine power due to an in-flight separation of the crankshaft, caused by a fatigue crack that originated from the aft fillet radius of the No. 2 main journal, resulting in a forced landing in a field and impact with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99LA081
- Event ID
- 20001205X00211
- Case number
- MIA99LA081
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: 45b4f04e9b0713cd30c06d05b9377952aafbed6a549e7d9f2328f8930cec0fc9; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:36:26.559Z.