FTW97LA246 · Cessna T210M
Cessna T210M · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV) to Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA246
- 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
- N761FM
- Operator
- Clyde F. Sanford III · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV)To Tyler Pounds Regional Airport (TYR), Tyler, 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 · climb to 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, piston › Disintegrated
- Miscellaneous, engine pre-ignition and/or detonation
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was on its climb to cruise when the engine lost power. The pilot performed a forced landing short of the runway in rough and uneven terrain. An examination of the engine revealed that the #1 cylinder piston was seized in the cylinder, the piston rings were broken, the piston head was deteriorated around the edge down to the top compression ring with a portion of the ring missing, metal was deposited on the intake valve seat, and the intake valve was stuck in the open position. The #1 cylinder dome was damaged and scaring was noted on the cylinder walls. Aluminum particles were found in the #1 cylinder spark plugs and embedded in the #1 cylinder combustion chamber and internal components of the engine. According to the manufacturer, no discrepancies were found with the engine components that 'would have caused detonation/preignition to [the] number 1 cylinder.' The cylinder met the SAE chemistry requirements. The manufacturer's metallurgist stated that 'the burning of the piston crown most likely is the result of either detonation or pre-ignition.'
Probable cause
The disintegration of the #1 cylinder piston resulting from a detonation/pre-ignition condition due to an unknown reason. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA246
- Event ID
- 20001208X08366
- Case number
- FTW97LA246
- 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: 3518997013619914ee2c8ae183ecef2c3d1dce4045e3151d63e58b7cecac2be0; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:18:37.123Z.