CHI03LA305 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW) to Pine River Regional Airport (PWC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA305
- 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 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
- N5360U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW), Superior, WITo Pine River Regional Airport (PWC), Pine River, MN
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft was substantially damaged during a forced landing following a complete loss of engine power. The pilot reported that during descent he "felt the plane slow up quite quickly." He reported he verified the position of the engine controls, however he was unable to restore power. The pilot stated that he selected an emergency landing field. He noted: "After I cleared the tree line I put down my wheels and ten degrees of flaps. … I had to turn pretty sharply to avoid a large tree that was in the middle of the field. When I felt I had cleared the tree I straightened out the plane and pulled the nose up to flare. The plane did not seem to flare and hit the ground very hard. The landing gear collapsed upon impact and the plane slid on the ground." The pilot reported no malfunctions with the aircraft or engine prior to the loss of engine power. The post-accident examination of the aircraft recovered approximately 8 ounces of fuel from the fuel tanks. No fuel was present in the fuel line running from the firewall to the engine. The fuel tanks and lines appeared to be intact and no evidence of fuel leakage was observed. The pilot stated that he did not visually confirm the fuel level before flight. He reported referencing remaining fuel quantity from a fuel management computer installed in the aircraft. The operating manual for the fuel management computer stated: "[The fuel management computer] is a fuel flow measuring system and NOT a quantity-sensing device. A visual inspection and positive determination of the usable fuel in the fuel tanks is a necessity. Therefore, it is imperative that the determined available usable fuel be manually entered into the system."
Probable cause
An inadequate pre-flight inspection by the pilot due to his failure to visually confirm fuel quantity prior to flight, and the resulting fuel exhaustion. Contributing factors were the pilot's improper use of the fuel management computer installed in the aircraft, and the tree located in the middle of the emergency landing field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA305
- Event ID
- 20030911X01523
- Case number
- CHI03LA305
- 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, coordinates. 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: 10ccd04bd14fdb27ab9b17802ad2ac099df2551e53185e13a1b4dcecc4a11c9a; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:23:10.812Z.