NYC00LA164 · Cessna 210
Cessna 210 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Taylor County Airport (AAS) to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA164
- 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 210
- 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
- N485CA
- Operator
- Cardinal Wings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Taylor County Airport (AAS), Campbellsville, KYTo Bowman Field (LOU), KY
- 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)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Louisville, KY, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The accident happened on the third flight of the day. During the pervious two flights the pilot noticed nothing unusual about the airplane. On the third flight, the fuel selector was set to the left tank for departure and cruise. Each fuel tank had approximately 30 gallons of fuel at departure. The airplane departed, and climbed to an en route altitude of 2,500 feet msl for the 15 minutes flight. About 10 minutes into the flight, the pilot completed the descent checks, selected flaps to 10 degrees, and switched from the left tank to the right tank, transitioning the off position. Two minutes after switching tanks, and with no warning, the pilot experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot switched back to the left tank. He tried several different engine control, and auxiliary fuel pump configurations to attempt a restart, but was unsuccessful. The pilot executed a forced landing to a field. The airplane touched down and nosed over. Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact failures with either the engine or the airframe.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper operation of the fuel selector.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA164
- Event ID
- 20001212X21311
- Case number
- NYC00LA164
- 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: 52444e5a5d0d6f27e0416bb7dfa7d644b98d8d4b161e57593c99bf35fffcda65; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:11:40.968Z.