FTW97LA066 · Cessna 210N
Cessna 210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From R69 · Rocksprings, TX to Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA066
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Cessna 210N
- 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
- N6555Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From R69 · Rocksprings, TXTo Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV), TX
- 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 (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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the engine lost power without warning while in cruise flight at 3,500 feet. The pilot reported that he switched tanks and activated the fuel boost pump to no avail. He intended to land on a road, but due to obstructions on the road, he executed a forced landing to an adjacent open field. The accident site was approximately 10 miles west of the destination airport. During the landing roll, in what turned out to be 'a very rocky field,' the outboard portion of the left wing impacted a tree, and both main landing gear were torn from the airframe. The pilot stated that before his departure from Rocksprings, Texas, the airplane's fuel totalizer was indicating 18.8 gallons of fuel remaining. The fuel gages were reading 1/4 in the left tank and between 1/8 and 1/4 in the right tank. The pilot calculated that the distance between the two airports was 56.6 nautical miles, and he intended to use his Loran to fly direct. Postaccident examination of the aircraft revealed that the right fuel tank was empty and only residual fuel remained in the left fuel tank. The fuel selector valve was found in the right tank position.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, which resulted in fuel exhaustion due to an inadequate supply of fuel. A factor relating to the accident was: the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA066
- Event ID
- 20001208X07165
- Case number
- FTW97LA066
- 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: c4d98d2c651acfcefa57876c24ea34e4a2f704062c1ab823dd54b0464d63219c; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:36:31.850Z.