SEA05LA011 · Cessna T210H
Cessna T210H · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Riddick Field (U05) to Missoula Montana Airport (MSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA011
- 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 T210H
- 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
- N2240R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Riddick Field (U05), Philipsburg, MTTo Missoula Montana Airport (MSO), Missoula, MT
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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)
- 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 › Excessive flow/output
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
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 said that he was on final, and he had been cleared to land. He said that he put the low auxiliary fuel pump on, to move the fuel selector to the fullest tank, and then he turned it off. He then noticed that he was below the glide path, and he advanced the throttle for more power. The power did not increase. He attempted an engine restart to no avail. The pilot said that he was "very close to the ground," so he abandoned the restart attempt and performed a forced landing. During the landing roll, the airplane traversed a drainage ditch and struck a transmission pole with its left wing. The nose wheel landing gear and right main landing gear were separated from the aircraft. The outer three feet of the left wing was crushed aft and the entire left wing was bent aft at the wing root. The fuselage was wrinkled and twisted. The owner of the airplane stated that the airplane had been topped-off with fuel approximately 1.0 hour, of engine operation, before the accident. On October 29, 2004, under the auspices of a Federal Aviation Administration Inspector, the engine was test run; it started and ran "without a problem." The airplane manufacturer's Pilot's Operating Handbook does not recommend turning on the auxiliary fuel pump for normal fuel selector tank changes. The airplane manufacturer's Pilot Safety and Warning Supplements manual states: "The auxiliary fuel pump should not be operated during takeoff and landing, since gravity and the engine driven fuel pump will supply adequate fuel flow to the fuel injector unit." And, "Each time the auxiliary fuel pump switch is turned on or off, the mixture should be readjusted."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow published procedures/directives (inducing excessive fuel flow to the engine), and the subsequent loss of engine power for nonmechanical reasons while on final approach. Contributing factors were the utility pole and the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA011
- Event ID
- 20041026X01698
- Case number
- SEA05LA011
- 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: bef0e8f74c520e7ca748c8b8b1547ce1d41dd2037720a7d2b603f0f7c64f191e; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:35:06.280Z.