IAD98LA051 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW) to Richmond Executive-Chesterfield County Airport (FCI)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA051
- 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 P210N
- 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
- N4543K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW), Bartow, FLTo Richmond Executive-Chesterfield County Airport (FCI), VA
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed on a cross-country flight with an undetermined amount of fuel and flew approximately 4 hours and 15 minutes before it experienced a loss of engine power. The airplane crashed in a wooded area approximately 2 miles from the destination airport during the subsequent forced landing. According to a State Police Officer the passenger stated they '...ran out of fuel and crashed.' Examination of the aircraft wreckage revealed that both wing tanks contained no fuel, and the fuel line to the flow divider contained only about a spoonful of fuel. The engine ran to rated power in a test cell after the accident. During the test, the engine driven fuel pump exhibited high pressure and flow rates at full power.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which led to fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA051
- Event ID
- 20001211X10103
- Case number
- IAD98LA051
- 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: d67ec992849248b7037ed3182c9561de96899d0aa756c87ba379364c30ddcf67; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:33:23.129Z.