IAD03LA066 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO) to LaGuardia Airport (LGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03LA066
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
- N155RR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO), East Hampton, NYTo LaGuardia Airport (LGA), LA GUARDIA, NY
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had just leveled off at 2,000 feet msl, on a night, over-water, non-scheduled passenger flight, when the engine began to lose power. The pilot immediately turned the auxiliary fuel pump on, switched fuel tanks, and turned towards land. The engine continued to lose power, and the pilot prepared the airplane and the four passengers for a water landing. The pilot pushed the mixture control level full forward, and completed the emergency checklist items; however, the engine continued to lose power and could not be restarted. The airplane came to rest in approximately 8 feet of water, about 150 yards off shore. Examination of the airplane revealed approximately 50 gallons of fuel onboard, and no anomalies were noted with the fuel system. The engine was test run on the airframe, after the oil and spark plugs (electrodes were wet) were removed and replaced. After several attempts, the engine started and ran at various power settings without interruption. The ignition switch was also tested and no abnormalities were found.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03LA066
- Event ID
- 20030728X01207
- Case number
- IAD03LA066
- 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 2003-07-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 529266f21d4d125261f4775e625fd74c8562b381777786329c57da8089925cbe; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:43:50.828Z.