DEN99LA174 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF) to Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA174
- 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
- N999KM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Fe Municipal Airport (SAF), NMTo Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, 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 · climb to 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was equipped with a Rolls Royce (Allison) 250-B17F turbine engine. All the fuel tanks (wings, tips, fuselage) were topped off with Jet-A fuel (about 147 gallons) and Prist, a fuel additive. During the first attempt to start the engine, N1 reached about 30% with no temperature rise, so the pilot stopped the start sequence. After waiting about five minutes, a second start attempt was successful. Peak turbine outlet temperature (TOT) was 707 degrees C. Taxi, runup, and takeoff were normal. About 10 minutes after departure, as the airplane was climbing through 12,000 feet msl, 'the engine stopped, the generator light came on, and the torque needle went to zero.' An inflight restart was attempted but was not successful. The pilot made a forced landing on Highway 16. Oncoming traffic forced the pilot to depart the side of the road shearing off the nose wheel at the fork. The wings flexed during the off roadway excursion, causing the spar web and cap to buckle downward. The engine was later functionally tested successfully.
Probable cause
A non-mechanical total loss of engine power for reasons undetermined. Factors were maneuvering to avoid oncoming vehicles, and the rough and uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA174
- Event ID
- 20001212X19751
- Case number
- DEN99LA174
- 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: 79396dffaa7b9789affda58761aa05ab274d9f9a2e457b0faa2d787435c822a8; retrieved 2026-09-22T14:12:36.706Z.