LAX96FA308 · Cessna 210E
Cessna 210E · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From San Bernardino International Airport (SBD) to L35
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96FA308
- 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
- 1 · 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 210E
- 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
- N4931U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Bernardino International Airport (SBD), San Bernardino, CATo L35
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system, line fitting › Leak
- Fuel system, pump › Blocked(total)
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane engine sustained a total loss of power while approaching the airport to land. The pilot elected to land in an open field. During the landing the airplane struck a dirt mound and then became entangled with a telephone support cable. The investigation revealed that the engine driven fuel pump jet orifice was blocked and air bubbles were introduced into the engine fuel system. The fuel metering unit filter screen was 20 percent blocked with unidentified debris. The filter screen had not been recently removed. Two of the fuel system hoses leaked. The inlet fuel hose at the gascolator gap between the 'B' nut and the collar exceeded the manufacturer's recommended tolerances. All of the engine fuel system hoses exterior were deteriorated. The last annual inspection was accomplished about 7 months before the accident. The annual inspection was the first inspection accomplished in 2 years. The airplane accrued 7.95 hours in the 2 years preceding the accident. The investigation revealed that the pilot recently had both hips replaced and a coronary by-pass operation.
Probable cause
an inadequate annual inspection conducted by other maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96FA308
- Event ID
- 20001208X06540
- Case number
- LAX96FA308
- 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: 623d4b8be0c150ee44d334da11001f5776d77b5f43979b0e2d61387d56ca4eb6; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:13:31.518Z.