DEN05LA008 · Cessna 210M
Cessna 210M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Bullfrog Basin Airport (U07) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA008
- 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 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
- N732TE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bullfrog Basin Airport (U07), Bullfrog Basin, UTTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, CO
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Fuel supply, inadequate
- 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 pilot-rated passenger aboard the accident flight -- the pilot's flight instructor -- had flown the airplane to their vacation spot the previous week. The pilot followed in an automobile carrying a week's worth of supplies. The pilot estimated the instructor had 45 gallons of fuel on board when he departed. The first leg of ther trip took 1 hour, 20 minutes. There, the instructor purchased 40 gallons of fuel. The last leg took 1 hour, 10 minutes. When they prepared to return home, the pilot asked his flight instructor if he had purchased any fuel. The instructor thought he was referring to gasoline purchased for the houseboat, and he replied he had purchased 60 gallons. The pilot said that when they took off, he thought he had more fuel on board than there actually was. The takeoff and climb to 11,500 feet was made on the left tank. After 30 minutes, he switched to the right tank. Knowing the right fuel gauge was unreliable, he drew fuel from the right tank until it ran dry about 1 hour later. He switched back to the left tank and climbed to 13,500 feet. The airplane had now been in the air approximately 1 hour, 30 minutes. Ten to 15 minutes later, the engine "sputtered" and lost power. The left fuel gauge indicated 1/3 full. All attempts to restore engine power were to no avail. He turned and glided towards an airport. When he turned final for runway 24, he lost sight of the runway because the sun was in his eyes. He selected a field and touched down 1/4-mile to the right runway centerline and 1 mile short of the runway. The landing gear was torn off and the empennage was extensively damage. The left wing struck a fence post and breached the fuel tank. Fuel leaked from the tank, "but not a whole lot." The pilot said he used an average fuel consumption rate of 15 gallons per hour fuel when making endurance and range calculations. He estimated he had an hour's worth of fuel on board plus reserves. Later, he admitted the engine most likely post power due to fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning which failed to determine the fuel supply was inadequate resulting in fuel exhaustion and the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA008
- Event ID
- 20041014X01627
- Case number
- DEN05LA008
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-10-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 66375376d8f2c34301c2c22df72808f395235bab78efce209712dbefd947a306; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:37:22.918Z.