LAX99LA203 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Reno Tahoe International Airport (KRNO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA203
- 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
- N37MJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reno Tahoe International Airport (KRNO)To not recorded
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 starvation
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inattentive
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, not selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a second practice ILS approach, the pilot announced to the Reno ATCT local controller that he was out of fuel. The airplane crashed in a field 1 mile short of the runway. The pilot said that prior to the accident, they had practiced holding patterns, a VOR approach, and one ILS approach. After the engine suddenly quit, the pilot looked at the right fuel gage, which read empty, and switched the selector to the left tank. The pilot was unable to effect an engine restart prior to colliding with the ground. An FAA airworthiness inspector responded to the accident site. He determined that the responding airport fire department units had turned the fuel selector from the left tank to the off position. Examination of the fuel system disclosed that it was intact. Two ounces of fuel were drained from the right wing tank and 13 ounces from the right reservoir tank. The left fuel tank contained about 25 gallons of fuel and the left reservoir tank had 65 ounces.
Probable cause
Fuel starvation resulting from the pilot's inattentive monitoring and management of the fuel system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA203
- Event ID
- 20001212X18829
- Case number
- LAX99LA203
- 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: daab9d036b3b4841f271db7e22cc1562a2a82717e995daef063c6ccd72cf7469; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:01:46.820Z.