DFW05LA027 · Cessna P210N
Silver Wings Aviation Cessna P210N · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Salina Municipal Airport (SLN) to Tulsa, OK
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05LA027
- 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
- N6300P
- Operator
- Silver Wings Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salina Municipal Airport (SLN), Salina, KSTo Tulsa, OK
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, improper
- Pilot in command › Fuel tank selector position, 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 4,000-hour pilot reported that during cruise flight, the engine lost power. While descending, the pilot further stated that he disengaged the autopilot, advanced the mixture to full, cycled the fuel pump, and switched from the left to the right fuel tank, and "the engine momentarily gained power for a few minutes." Subsequently, the engine lost power again and the pilot elected to land on a gravel road. During the landing roll, the left main wheel separated, and the left main landing gear collapsed as the airplane came to rest in an upright position. Prior to the recovery of the airplane, the Federal Aviation Administration inspector was able to start the engine using the right fuel tank. The engine ran for approximately 10 minutes with no abnormalities noted before the inspector shut the engine down using the mixture control. During the recovery process, the inspector noted that approximately one gallon of fuel was drained from the left wing fuel tank and approximately 35 gallons of fuel were drained from the right wing fuel tank. As stated in the FAA approved pilot's operating handbook, the unusable fuel quantity for both fuel tanks is one gallon.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement of the fuel by his failure to adequately set the fuel selector position which resulted in fuel exhaustion and the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05LA027
- Event ID
- 20041214X01987
- Case number
- DFW05LA027
- 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: 44b43860a97e38ad5b06f4cfe7f4ea3ac0aa8121724e119cacf4dac3489f3dc3; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:28:23.471Z.