BFO96LA036 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96LA036
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 T210N
- 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
- N5218A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport (Lovell Field) (CHA), Chattanooga, TNTo Bowman Field (LOU), KY
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that as he neared the destination airport, the right fuel tank ran out of fuel, so he switched to the left tank. He stated that the left fuel quantity gage indicated that it contained about 1/4 tank of fuel. The pilot reported that when the airplane was about 2-1/2 miles from the destination airport, the engine sputtered and lost power. The pilot's attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful, and he made a forced landing in a residential area about 1/2 mile from the approach end of the runway. The pilot stated that due to traffic and the length of the streets, he was unable to maintain normal glide speed until touchdown. Subsequently, the airplane impacted on a roadway and skidded into a tree. The pilot attributed the accident to fuel exhaustion. Postaccident examination revealed no evidence of usable fuel in the airplane fuel system. No fuel odor or fuel stains were noted at the accident site. Visual inspection of the fuel system revealed no indication of a preimpact mechanical failure, and the aircraft maintenance logs '. . . revealed no past discrepancies involving the fuel system.'
Probable cause
the pilot's misjudgment of the fuel supply, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion during final approach to the destination airport. Factors relating to the accident were: terrain conditions and vehicles in the emergency landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96LA036
- Event ID
- 20001208X05100
- Case number
- BFO96LA036
- 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: 7b2aad93d9a602151b815d04a71dcd68dbb491de1ff4a7ac86fcaf203e917b4d; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:54:43.135Z.