NYC98LA001 · Cessna T210L
Cessna T210L · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Harry Clever Field (PHD) to Northampton Airport (7B2)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA001
- 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 T210L
- 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
- N29134
- Operator
- James P. Sheahan · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Clever Field (PHD), PHILADELPHIA, OHTo Northampton Airport (7B2), Northampton, MA
- 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, bearing › Shifted
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Failure, total
- Terrain condition › Hidden obstruction(s)
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The Cessna 210 was in cruise when the engine lost power. The pilot descended through an overcast and made a forced landing in an open field. During a ground slide with the landing gear retracted, the airplane passed over a creek, and received substantial damage. A torque check conducted before engine disassembly revealed low torques on a nose case bolt, and some cylinder through bolts on the front and middle cylinders. Engine disassembly revealed that the crankshaft had fractured near the rear of the number 2 main bearing, located between the middle and rear cylinders. The investigation found that the bearing had shifted to the rear of the engine and made contact with the short cheek of the crankshaft. The number 4 cylinder was replaced 469 hours prior to the accident, and the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 cylinders were replaced 367 hours prior to the accident.
Probable cause
slippage of the number 2 main bearing for undetermined reason(s) which resulted in a broken crankshaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA001
- Event ID
- 20001208X09096
- Case number
- NYC98LA001
- 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: d90a3ff1d21ef15defd4138c30a586deea238bad74c0b2ab0385334877a169ea; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:47:26.479Z.