DEN00LA055 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to Sheridan County Airport (SHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA055
- 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
- N6489W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo Sheridan County Airport (SHR), Sheridan, WY
- 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
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure, the airplane was reportedly serviced to capacity (123 gallons). Weather was checked, and the pilot decided to fly VFR at 16,500 feet. No flight plan was filed. TAS was 185 knots, yielding an average GPS ground speed of 180 knots. It was estimated the 1,026 nm flight would take 5.7 hours. Allowing 20 minutes to climb to altitude, the pilot determined he would have more an hour of fuel reserve. Nearing his destination, the fuel gauges 'looked suspiciously low' (the Hoskins fuel calculator indicated 27 gallons of fuel remained). The pilot decided to divert to Gillette. Shortly thereafter, the engine lost power. The pilot made a forced landing on hilly terrain. The airplane touched down hard on a flat spot. The nose landing gear sheared off, and the airplane nosed over. Burning 120 gallons in 5.7 hours would require a consumption rate of slightly more than 21 gph.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to land sooner to refuel, resulting in a power loss due to fuel exhaustion. A factor was a lack of suitable terrain on which to make a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA055
- Event ID
- 20001212X20611
- Case number
- DEN00LA055
- 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: 5e6650acccb92a045cd59e7255cdc77551e082ebb252d66b00dadc0b85d509e9; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:06:11.319Z.