SEA04FA165 · Cessna T210L
Cessna T210L · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS) to Joplin Regional Airport (JLN)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04FA165
- 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
- 3 · 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 T210L
- 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
- N2452S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Tulsa, OKTo Joplin Regional Airport (JLN), Joplin, MO
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
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 was departing on runway 19R. Moments after liftoff, the pilot called tower and asked to return to the airport because he was getting oil on his windscreen. A pilot taking off immediately behind the accident airplane observed the airplane, at approximately 300 feet, turn right to return to the airport. He said that the airplane appeared very slow, and then it rotated to the ground. Postimpact examination of the wreckage revealed that the engine oil filler neck did not have a cap on it. The oil filler neck was partially compressed, and the oil cap was found (on a chain) undamaged. Pieces of windscreen Plexiglas were found outside of the wreckage zone, and they were coated with oil. The engine manufacturer's representative said that the engine could probably run for 15 to 25 minutes without a cap on the filler neck.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection by his failure to secure the oil cap, which resulted in oil leakage on the windscreen, obstructing his vision, and his failure to maintain adequate airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04FA165
- Event ID
- 20040826X01290
- Case number
- SEA04FA165
- 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: 6486bd0bca041862c235d0ee9dfa869e1b0ddfe25917c5112d20dd56f72653df; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:22:22.660Z.