Flight 812 · Cessna 210L
Cessna 210L · Accident: in flight collision with object during an emergency descent
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA99FA230
- 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
- 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 210L
- 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
- N640AJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort Lauderdale, FLTo Tampa International Airport (TPA)
- 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
- Emergency 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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; Wire, static
- 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
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The first leg of the flight was uneventful; fueling of the airplane was not performed after landing as indicated in the route procedure. No adverse weather existed while the flight was on the ground. The pilot flew in a multi-engine airplane for a 1.8 hours; 1.5 hours of which were as a flight instructor after the first leg. The second and third flight legs were uneventful; fueling was not performed after those landings. The pilot twice requested to land on runway 36R; he was advised to follow company traffic landing runway 18L. A witness heard the engine sputtering and after being cleared to land, the pilot declared an emergency. The airplane collided with power lines, a dust bin, and remained suspended on the dust bin. No more than 10 ounces of fuel were drained from the airplane; no fuel leakage was noted. No engine, flight control, or fuel indicating system preimpact failure or malfunction was noted. Impact damage to the right fuel gauge prevented needle movement during postaccident testing. The airplane had been operated for 4 hours 54 minutes since fueling by the accident pilot. Instructions required by Airworthiness Directive (AD) 94-12-08, was not incorporated into the aircraft records.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to follow procedures and directives established by the operator for his failure to fuel the airplane after landing following the first leg. Contributing to the accident was the total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Findings in the investigation were 1) the failure of company maintenance personnel to comply with all instructions of Airworthiness Directive (AD) 94-12-08, and 2) the pilot flew a total of 1.8 hours in a multi-engine airplane after the first leg landing; 1.5 hours of which were as a flight instructor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA99FA230
- Event ID
- 20001212X19580
- Case number
- MIA99FA230
- 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: 3d39123a2f28cdf28e28045a9964b550663d662eeadcc1b25d8580dd7a016381; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:16:52.464Z.