LAX99FA038 · Cessna T210L
Cessna T210L · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From 069 · Petaluma, CA to WV1 · Watsonville, CA
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA038
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N9222T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From 069 · Petaluma, CATo WV1 · Watsonville, CA
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Altitude, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger departed on a cross-country flight. The flight reached the destination airport; however, due to fog and low stratus clouds the pilot diverted to another airport for lunch. On the return trip air traffic control (ATC) observed an unidentified aircraft circle a coliseum in class 'B' airspace during a major football game. Two pilot witnesses at the game observed the same make and model airplane over the coliseum 500/700 feet above ground level near the accident time. It then proceeded towards another major airport located in class 'C' airspace when the transponder was observed to quit operating about 5 miles from that airport. The airplane was then tracked as a primary target until radar contact was lost. The accident airplane crashed into a high school cafeteria about 2.25 miles northeast of Oakland International Airport. Two witness statements were obtained from persons at the Castlemont School. One reported hearing the engine cutting on and off as he watched it collide with the building. The other witness heard no engine sound and also watched it collide with the building. The pilot stated that his passenger had gotten into the rear seat while in-flight to photograph the coliseum football game. The passenger was not wearing a seat belt and neither wore shoulder harnesses at the time of accident. The last thing that the pilot recalled was asking his passenger if she could read the scoreboard. When asked how high he was flying, the pilot stated 5,500 feet mean sea level. Examination of the radios revealed the transponder was off and both communication radios were on Unicom frequencies. According to on scene emergency service personnel, there was fuel venting or running from the airplane in a steady stream. The local fire department foamed the accident area.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's inadequate fuel management which led to fuel starvation and subsequent loss of engine power. Also causal was the pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude and his ostentatious display.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA038
- Event ID
- 20001211X11450
- Case number
- LAX99FA038
- 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: 5fb46a89db330e6df9bceebdddf2d0d61007402f343f40bd188830b45a5b9716; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:19:05.118Z.