LAX07CA046 · Cessna T210M
Cessna T210M · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA046
- 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 T210M
- 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
- N977SA
- Operator
- Jeffrey M. Soderberg · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NV
- 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 · descent
- 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; Wire, transmission
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane lost engine power short of the cross-country flight's intended destination and impacted a telephone line during the forced landing attempt. The pilot reported that he was limited in total fuel load (320 pounds or about 53 gallons) prior to departing due to the airplane's maximum gross weight limitation and the passenger and baggage loading. However, he calculated the estimated flight time (estimated to be about 2 hours) and the estimated fuel burn and believed he had adequate fuel on board to safely conduct the flight with a 30-minute fuel reserve. About 15 miles from the destination airport, the right fuel tank ran dry and the engine began to run rough. The pilot switched the fuel selector to the left fuel tank, which at the time had about 45 pounds of fuel indicated. As the airplane neared the destination airport, the engine lost power. The pilot restarted the engine intermittently for a few seconds, but the engine lost power for the final time when the airplane was about 2 miles from the airport. The pilot declared an emergency and conducted a forced landing to a field. The airplane impacted a telephone line as it neared touchdown. The pilot reported to the first responders that he had mismanaged his fuel, and had elected not to refuel at an airport he had passed over that was located 66 nautical miles northeast of the final destination.
Probable cause
fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inadequate fuel consumption calculations and his failure to refuel the airplane during the cross-country flight,.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA046
- Event ID
- 20070109X00032
- Case number
- LAX07CA046
- 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: afbee855b3181a73e8e40856a2d5d9e5ef6f09b2944d34fe40679ba1682b0307; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:12:30.292Z.