ATL04TA012 · Cessna 210L
Cessna 210L · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Jacksonville Naval Air Station (Towers Field) (NIP) to Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04TA012
- 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 210L
- 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
- N59063
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville Naval Air Station (Towers Field) (NIP), Jacksonville, FLTo Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM), Birmingham, AL
- 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 · 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
- Eng assembly, crankshaft counterweights/vib damper › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while in cruise flight at 10,000 feet agl, the engine lost power. The pilot made a wheels up forced landing into a field. Maintenance history revealed that the engine had a propeller strike on February 19, 2003. The engine was removed from the airplane and sent to Certified Engines Unlimited, for special inspection. The engine had a total time since major overhaul (TTSMOH) of 509.2 hours. On March 21, 2003, the engine was reinstalled on the airplane and returned to service. On May 13, 2003, the engine was removed and sent to Certified Engines Unlimited, due to a crankshaft counterweight failure TTSMOH 535.1 hours. The counterweights were replaced and the engine was reinstalled on the airplane June 12, 2003. On October 7, 2003 while in cruise flight the airplane had a catastrophic engine failure TTSMOH 734.1 hours. Examination of the engine at TCM found the crankshaft fractured through the number one connecting rod journal forward fillet radius and upper counterweight hanger blade. The rear upper crankshaft counterweight was detached from its hanger blade. One plate and snap-ring was forced from their locations on each side of the counterweight by mechanical action of the pins. The counterweight plates of this counterweight were bowed outward in relationship to their installed positions. One of the snap-rings was fractured in two pieces and both snap-rings that were not in place exhibited signatures of being forced from their retaining grooves in the counterweight. The remaining rear counterweight exhibited sever mechanical damage and was intact on the hanger blade. The forward set of counterweights, pins, plates and snap-rings were intact and undamaged and had free and unrestricted movement on the hanger blades.
Probable cause
Loss of engine power due to crankshaft counterweight failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04TA012
- Event ID
- 20031015X01725
- Case number
- ATL04TA012
- 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: 8c8fe017d09712d4d7e0f4dfca0a9b00e0c2174187b0ba89e6ccd28905ca308f; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:23:15.099Z.