DEN04LA107 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) to Provo Municipal Airport (PVU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA107
- 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 P210N
- 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
- N7736K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SDTo Provo Municipal Airport (PVU), Provo, UT
- 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while in cruise flight at 22,000 feet msl, the engine "quit." The pilot stated that the propeller continued to "windmill," and at that time he noted approximately 50 gallons of fuel remaining. The pilot's attempts to restart the engine were unsuccessful. He declared an emergency and was diverted to a nearby airport. On final approach to runway 28, the airplane's left main landing gear struck a fence post. The airplane landed approximately 200 feet short of the runway threshold and its left main landing gear collapsed. The airplane veered left of the runway centerline and came to a stop in the grass. The impact buckled the left wing tip and left horizontal stabilizer. An examination of the engine revealed a 7/8-inch by 3/8-inch hole in the top of the crankcase, just forward of the number 1 cylinder. Further examination revealed the engine crankshaft was fractured at the number 2 rod journal. The crankshaft exhibited thermal discoloration and impact marks at the number 2, 3, 4, and 5 rod journals. Rotational scoring and thermal discoloration was observed on the crankshaft's number 2 main bearing. The number 2 bearing was fragmented and fretting was observed on the crankcase halves at the number 2 bearing through bolts. The engine maintenance records indicated on November 17, 2003, at 2,845.0 hours, during the airplane's most recent 100-hour inspection, the number 2 cylinder was replaced. At the time of the accident, the total time was 3,083.0 hours.
Probable cause
the failure of the engine's crankshaft due to the rotation of the engine's number two bearing, which resulted in the oil starvation of the crankshaft's number 2 main journal. Contributing factors include the engine's improper maintenance, and the in-flight collision with a fence post during a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA107
- Event ID
- 20040726X01068
- Case number
- DEN04LA107
- 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. 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: 1b5fe16b8c24ef39b59b258eb9d1938407ca176e189a9790b1a6bdea34a7fa3f; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:01:30.661Z.