FTW99LA160 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA160
- 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
- N4774K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS), Fort Worth, TXTo 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
- 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
- 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, piston › Failure, total
- Engine assembly, valve, exhaust › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the night forced landing, following a total loss of engine power, the airplane, maneuvered by the pilot to avoid telephone poles, struck crops & nosed over. At a cylinder overhaul (166.5 hours prior to the accident), the owner requested the installation of used serviceable components. A serviceable exhaust valve & piston were installed in the #4 cylinder. Following the accident, metal pieces were found in the intake tubes, engine & oil pump. The #4 cylinder piston was broken into numerous pieces, and the exhaust valve head was separated from the valve stem. Damage to the #4 cylinder valves & piston precluded metallurgical examination to determine the mode of failure. The #4 connecting rod was separated from the crankshaft. The connecting rod bearings were found coated with oil and without evidence of lack of lubrication. Testing of both front lap belts, which failed during the accident, and both front shoulder harnesses found the belts and shoulder harnesses did not meet manufacturer's specifications.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power resulting from a failure of the #4 cylinder exhaust valve and/or piston. Factors were the dark night conditions and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA160
- Event ID
- 20001212X18994
- Case number
- FTW99LA160
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-06-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d65b808114ff8154da950593522d6d9b43c679f9ad2af99449fcb4e3745ffa8b; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:31:26.359Z.