LAX05CA030 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW) to Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA030
- 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
- N6416W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roswell Air Center Airport (ROW), Roswell, NMTo Sacramento Executive Airport (SAC), Sacramento, CA
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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; 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following a loss of engine power, the pilot made a forced landing on a street about 1.2 miles from the airport, and collided with trees and the center median. A responding law enforcement officer, who was also a pilot, examined the fuel tanks on scene. Virtually no usable fuel was found. The main fuel tanks were "bone dry," and only 1.75 gallons were found in the left tip tank. The pilot planed the nearly 6-hour-long flight as a nonstop between south eastern New Mexico and northern California. About 4 hours into the flight, with 2 hours left to go, the airplane experienced electrical malfunctions, which resulted in losing all generated alternator power. The airplane's master electrical switch was turned off to conserve residual battery power. The pilot decided to complete the nighttime flight to his original destination without operative navigation lights or any of the electrically driven instruments even though he passed over numerous airports during this time. Occasionally during the latter portion of the flight, the master switch was turned on in order to provide navigation guidance information to the pilot and to ascertain the quantity of fuel remaining as indicated by the electrically driven supplemental fuel flow/quantity computer. The airplane's owner, who was a passenger, advised the pilot of his concern regarding the validity of the fuel computer's indication since electric power to it had been interrupted. The pilot relied upon the fuel quantity computer in lieu of the standard fuel quantity indicators to ascertain the amount of available fuel in the tanks.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to refuel the airplane prior to fuel exhaustion, which resulted in a loss of engine power. Contributing factors were the pilot's improper in-flight decision to continue the flight at night after experiencing the total failure of the airplane's alternators, which resulted in inaccurate supplemental fuel quantity indications, and, the pilot's reliance upon the inaccurate data for fuel remaining information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA030
- Event ID
- 20050118X00062
- Case number
- LAX05CA030
- 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 2004-11-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 84679456b1f3fb0d0e33a3f540d3d52a74458e8305760ba7243edd6f0139e885; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:31:36.915Z.