NYC99LA128 · Cessna T310Q
Cessna T310Q · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO) to Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA128
- 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 T310Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N1273G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Waterloo Regional Airport (ALO), Waterloo, IATo Mansfield Municipal Airport (1B9), Mansfield, MA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Physical impairment(anoxia/hypoxia)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot purchased a turbocharged twin engine airplane, took it up for an acceptance flight, and the following day departed for home. According to ATC transcripts, about 2 hours into the flight to home, at 21,000 feet, the pilot was suffering from symptoms similar to hypoxia. He was not consistent in maintaining altitude, and failed to acknowledge all radio calls. About 3 hours, 50 minutes into the flight, while descending, the engines started to surge and subsequently lost power. The pilot landed in an open field. Examination of the airplane revealed the fuel tanks were empty except for unusable fuel. The pilot and a witness reported the airplane departed with full tanks. The pilot also reported he checked the oxygen system on both the acceptance flight and accident flight, and it was full. A check of the pilot's flight planning revealed sufficient fuel was available for the planned flight if the engine fuel mixtures were properly leaned. According to the AIM, hypoxia can impair judgement, memory, alertness, coordination and the ability to make calculations.
Probable cause
the pilot's impairment due to hypoxia, which resulted in reduced situational awareness and a power loss due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA128
- Event ID
- 20001212X19087
- Case number
- NYC99LA128
- 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: 8a342e56e6dd02eddcb1d1210008ef78ccdc110ed48636b2ef73a51b2d965f7f; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:01:19.424Z.