NYC97LA035 · Cessna T210M
Cessna T210M · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM) to 22B · Elyria, OH
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA035
- 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 T210M
- 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
- N732UH
- Operator
- Daniel N. Garon · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM), Birmingham, ALTo 22B · Elyria, OH
- 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, valve, exhaust › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Cessna 210 was cruising at 11,000 ft at night, when the engine began to run rough & lose power. The pilots attempted to fly to an airport with suitable services, but all engine power was lost. The pilots then performed a forced landing on a divided highway. During the landing, two vehicles were struck. Examination of the airplane & engine revealed oil on the underside of the fuselage & a hole on the top of the engine case. Further examination revealed the #5 exhaust valve guide had fractured just below the flange that seated the guide into the cylinder head, with evidence of fatigue. The #5 exhaust valve was fractured between the valve head & stem; but the cause of this fracture could not be determine due to impact damage to the fractured surfaces. The #5 intake valve was also partially broken, but fracture of this valve appeared to have been from overload, due to impact with debris inside the cylinder. Also, the #5 piston crown was found mutilated, & a hole was broken through the crown to the interior. Additionally, the main bearings and connecting rod bearings were damaged due to a lack of lubrication, and the #2 and #4 connecting rods had failed.
Probable cause
failure of #5 exhaust valve and/or #5 exhaust valve guide, which resulted in a progressive engine failure (debris puncturing the #5 piston crown, exhaust gasses entering the crankcase, loss of oil through the breather system, oil exhaustion, and subsequent damage to the engine bearings and connecting rods). Darkness and obstructions (vehicles) in the emergency landing area were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA035
- Event ID
- 20001208X07236
- Case number
- NYC97LA035
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-12-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 61a3937917107389522755313e856c6b67d0cbc3b79b23abd729d732f2c6932e; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:32:08.689Z.