ATL06LA050 · Cessna 210
Cessna 210 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From St Simons Island Airport (SSI) to DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL06LA050
- 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 210
- 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
- N6540X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Simons Island Airport (SSI), Brunswick, GATo DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GA
- 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 (mechanical 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
- 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
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Failure, total
- Engine assembly, crankshaft › Fatigue
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 departed the Malcolm Mc Kinnon Airport (SSI), on an instrument cross-country flight to Peachtree DeKalb Airport. He leveled off at 6,000 feet, and noticed that the engine analyzer No. 2 cylinder light began to flicker, and shortly thereafter the low voltage light illuminated. The pilot contacted air traffic control personnel (ATC), and requested to return to SSI. After the request was made to return to SSI, the engine began to shake violently while making a loud "banging" noise and the propeller stopped. The pilot informed ATC of the emergency, and requested to divert to the nearest airport. ATC diverted the pilot to the Jesup-Wayne County Airport (JES). The pilot stated that he was unable to maintain altitude and crashed into a stand of trees 2 miles southeast of JES. The crankshaft was removed from the engine and sent to the National Transportation Safety Board, Office of Research and Engineering Materials Laboratory Division for further examination. Examination disclosed that the crankshaft was broken due to fatigue through the crank cheek between the No. 1 and No. 2 connecting rod journals. Review of the airplane logbooks revealed that on November 20, 1989, a gear up landing occurred. The propeller was removed and the crankshaft was run-out and found to be .0006 out of round. According to the Service Bulletin M84-16, which was in place at the time of the mishap, if any damage greater than "minor dressing of the propeller tips to correct the problem" occurs, a complete teardown must be performed. A teardown was not performed, and a serviceable propeller was reinstalled and the airplane returned to service. The logbooks revealed there were approximately 750 flight hours on the crankshaft before it failed.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to the fatigue failure of the crankshaft, which resulted in a forced landing, and an in-flight collision with trees. A factor associated with the accident was the failure of other maintenance personnel to comply with the engine manufacturer's service bulletin following a previous mishap.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL06LA050
- Event ID
- 20060323X00335
- Case number
- ATL06LA050
- 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: b5cb66721c9425b193e7b735e733475d2f0915767414bfffd188e7e7e64c631a; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:48:58.170Z.