CHI01LA049 · Cessna 210C
Cessna 210C · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From EYE to Indianapolis Regional Airport (MQJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA049
- 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 210C
- 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
- N9791X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From EYETo Indianapolis Regional Airport (MQJ), MOUNT PLEASANT, IN
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
During initial climbout at about 1,000 feet agl, the engine started sputtering and lost power. A forced landing was executed to a rough field where a gear up landing was made. The pilot reported, "All controls were checked to be full forward, booster pumps Hi & lo were actuated, no response, turned 90 [degrees] to left to find airport, still no recovery, switched to right fuel tank, no response, looked for place to land and flew airplane until impact with ground." The on-site inspection indicated no apparent fuel stains in the snow around the right wing or the nose wheel where the gascolator was found broken. The fuel selector was found selected to the right tank. Both fuel caps were found with a ring of ice around the caps. The right fuel tank was visually verified empty and the left fuel tank was verified nearly full of fuel. The pilot reported both fuel tanks were topped off about a month prior to the accident and the airplane had been outside on a ramp since then. The fuel distributor exhibited fuel present and fuel was found in the fuel line leading to the fuel distributor.
Probable cause
The reason for the loss of engine power is undetermined. A factor was the rough terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA049
- Event ID
- 20001226X45479
- Case number
- CHI01LA049
- 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: db4a0bf4ce4b5cd8a880a93b5ab1a8bb1a088a7ac9ee2fb60c5f4c0645cdc337; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:16:32.165Z.