DFW05FA038 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Gulfport Biloxi International Airport (GPT) to Livingston Municipal Airport (00R)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05FA038
- 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
- 2 · 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 T210N
- 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
- N4873C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gulfport Biloxi International Airport (GPT), Gulfport-Biloxi, MSTo Livingston Municipal Airport (00R), Livington, TX
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 1,483-hour private pilot and a passenger departed on a 308-nautical mile cross-country flight. Approximately 22 minutes after take off, radar data revealed the airplane was headed west at an assigned cruise altitude of 6,000 feet msl. Shortly after, the airplane began a shallow descent and turned northwest toward an uncontrolled airport that was not its original destination. When the airplane was abeam, and south of the airport, it made a 270-degree, descending left-hand turn before it proceeded on a northeast heading toward the airport. Subsequently, the airplane descended into heavily wooded terrain about 1.2-miles southwest of the airport and was destroyed by post-impact fire. The wind was reported from 350 degrees at 10 knots gusting to 19 knots. Examination of the airplane revealed the fuel selector valve was turned off and no mechanical deficiencies were noted with the engine. The pilot's son disclosed that his father had been having problems with water contamination in the fuel.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. Also causal was the pilot's improper in-flight emergency planning when he misjudged his available altitude and made a 360 degree turn away from the airport instead of proceeding directly to it, which resulted in him landing over a mile short of the runway in heavily wooded terrain. A factor was the prevailing high wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05FA038
- Event ID
- 20041220X02007
- Case number
- DFW05FA038
- 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: 16a9a282a99bb61a164c5b7f8a34590b91b7210474abf7faa6ea006e159aa4d1; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:10:41.690Z.