CHI03LA059 · Cessna 210
Cessna 210 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Kirksville Regional Airport (IRK) to Waupaca Municipal Airport (PCZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA059
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N6572X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kirksville Regional Airport (IRK), Kirksville, MOTo Waupaca Municipal Airport (PCZ), Waupaca, WI
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a gear-up off airport landing following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported he added a quart of oil and strained the fuel tanks prior to the flight. He reported that during the flight while passing through 4,700 feet on his way up to 5,500 feet, the engine started sputtering and shaking. The pilot reported he switched fuel tanks, and adjusted the mixture, propeller control, and throttle. He stated the manifold pressure was indicating the high 20's and he was not sure if the engine was running. He reported the airplane was now at 3,700 feet and descending about 1,000 feet per minute. According to his global positioning system (GPS) the nearest airport was 9.8 miles away. After considering his landing options, the pilot elected to land in an area that was a "big black nothing." The pilot reported that he lowered the landing gear, but it did not engage in the down and locked position. He stated he was going to use the emergency extension hand pump, but he was getting low and decided to concentrate on flying the airplane. The forced landing was made in a harvested cornfield and the airplane contacted a barbwire fence prior to coming to a stop. The engine, a Continental IO-470-E, serial number 77543-O-E, had 1259.28 total hours when it was overhauled on June 30, 1971. The last logbook entry that listed a time since major overhaul (SMOH) for the engine was dated October 29, 2002. The time SMOH listed was 1237 hours. Total time on the airplane at the time of the accident was 2591.69 hours. Post accident inspection revealed it was difficult to turn the propeller by hand. There was a large amount of oil on the bottom of the engine cowling and no oil was found on the dipstick. The source of the oil leak was not determined. Further inspection revealed the crankshaft was broken between the number 2 and number 3 cylinders.
Probable cause
A failure of the crankshaft for undetermined reasons. Factors associated with the accident were the rough terrain on which the forced landing was made and the night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA059
- Event ID
- 20030128X00118
- Case number
- CHI03LA059
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-01-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6caeff1781cb63250a576b11b47b8dbc419409a4313322a3672bdfeb8251928d; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:38:46.911Z.