DFW06CA134 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From McAllen Miller International Airport (MFE) to T65 · Weslaco, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06CA134
- 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
- N731RR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McAllen Miller International Airport (MFE), Mc Allen, TXTo T65 · Weslaco, 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- 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 › Planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 954-hour private pilot was on a 24-mile ferry flight when the single-engine airplane lost engine power, approximately 3.5 miles from the destination airport. According to a written statement, the pilot reported that he switched to the left fuel tank and turned on the electric fuel pump, and the engine began to "run again." The pilot elected to climb to 1,500 feet and headed directly to the runway; however, approximately 2 miles from the runway the engine lost power again. The pilot made a mayday call and prepared for a forced landing in an open field short of the airport. During the landing roll, the landing gear collapsed and the airplane sustained structural damage. Prior to his departure, the pilot reported that the fuel gauges were showing 13 gallons of fuel in each tank; however, he did not visually check the fuel amount. The FAA inspector, who responded to the accident scene, examined the airplane and found no fuel in the airplane's fuel lines or tanks.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate preflight planning. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain available to the pilot for the forced landing,
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06CA134
- Event ID
- 20060705X00862
- Case number
- DFW06CA134
- 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. 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: 381488adaa46d917116ce51d4f10b6af16c7437142faf5c7adeacce36d5aa757; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:54:00.673Z.