FTW04FA022 · Cessna 210M
Cessna 210M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Granbury Regional Airport (GDJ) to Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04FA022
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 210M
- 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
- N777SG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Granbury Regional Airport (GDJ), Granbury, TXTo Stephenville Clark Regional Airport (SEP), Stephenville, TX
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff, the non-instrument rated private pilot reported over the radio that the engine was losing power and she was turning back to the departure airport. She said that she was unable to maintain altitude and was descending into fog. Her husband, who heard her radio transmissions, told her to lower the landing gear and flaps in an attempt to slow the airplane down. He then departed in his airplane to assist her. The pilot's husband said he saw a plume of black smoke about 5 miles southeast of the airport and flew over the sight, but was unable to see the ground due to fog, which was about 500 feet thick. The 150-hour pilot did not receive a weather briefing before departing. Weather reported at the destination airport, about 23 nautical miles away, included 1/4-mile visibility, fog, and an overcast ceiling at 100 feet. Examination of the airplane and engine revealed no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper pre-flight planning and loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A factor was the fog.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04FA022
- Event ID
- 20031211X02018
- Case number
- FTW04FA022
- 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: f29a477716328dac3125d338c92035f43e54a56075dd31bda2c9fbe78edd2190; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:47:42.395Z.