New Mexico Flying Service Cessna 210M accident
Cessna 210M · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Whiskey Creek Airport (94E) to Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA349
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 210M
- 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
- N732RD
- Operator
- New Mexico Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiskey Creek Airport (94E), Silver City, NMTo Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated the fuel tanks were serviced to capacity and she departed Albuquerque, New Mexico, and flew to Las Cruces and Silver City, New Mexico. She departed Silver City and was returning to Albuquerque. She was cleared to land on runway 3. As she descended over Belen, New Mexico, she switched the fuel selector from the right tank to the left tank. About 8 miles southwest of Albuquerque, the engine started to 'cut out.' She turned on the boost pump to restore fuel flow. Shortly thereafter, the engine 'stopped completely.' Unable to glide to the airport, she turned the airplane towards an open sandy area on top of a mesa and made a forced landing 6 miles from the runway. Upon touching down, the airplane settled into the soft ground. The nose landing gear was torn off and the airplane nosed over. An FAA inspector went to the accident site and reported finding fuel in the fuel tanks.
Probable cause
A power loss for reasons undetermined. A factor was unsuitable terrain on which to make a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA349
- Event ID
- 20001211X10845
- Case number
- FTW98LA349
- 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: 8df6f3ab56ef6674dd912e81cf38a675ad585e34c8a7fe1bce250956380e11a9; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:06:10.670Z.