LAX01LA065 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Colorado City Municipal Airport (AZC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA065
- 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 T210N
- 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
- N4729C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Colorado City Municipal Airport (AZC), AZTo not recorded
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, improper
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport rated pilot, who is also a maintenance technician, had just completed an annual inspection and installed an overhauled engine in the airplane. He stated that he had flown the airplane three times for a total of about 2.5 hours. During takeoff and initial climb, about 400 to 500 feet agl, the engine lost power. The pilot activated the fuel hi-boost pump, which generated brief surges of engine power. He performed a 180-degree turn back towards the airport, but was unable to reach the runway and collided with rocky terrain. He stated that he visually checked both fuel tanks during the preflight, observing about 1 inch in the left tank and about 1.5 inches in the right tank. He then checked the fuel gages, which showed about half full for each tank. At the time of the accident the fuel selector was on the left tank. The pilot stated that during a postaccident examination he found the left tank was empty. He also reported that after recovering the airplane and applying electrical power the left fuel gauge was stuck at 3/8 full.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper preflight and failure to refuel the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA065
- Event ID
- 20010102X00003
- Case number
- LAX01LA065
- 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: f342936543300500213dbec64bc8ba9cbd676f14d4f9582ce11d1ed3fa883686; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:01:35.882Z.