WPR09LA170 · Cessna T210L
Cessna T210L · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8) to Madera Municipal Airport (KMAE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA170
- 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 T210L
- 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
- N2445S
- Operator
- Davis David L
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harris Ranch Airport (3O8), Coalinga, CATo Madera Municipal Airport (KMAE), Madera, 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
- Initial climb
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Pole
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While entering the traffic pattern at his home base after a return flight, the pilot switched to the airplane's left tank. As he continued in the pattern he asked his passenger if he would like to make a landing for currency also. When the passenger said yes, the pilot changed his planned full-stop landing to a touch-and-go. During the initial climb after the touch-and-go, the engine lost all power and the pilot executed a forced landing into a grape orchard where the vegetation was supported by closely spaced posts. The investigation confirmed that both fuel tanks were empty at the time of the forced landing. It was further determined that the fuel tank dip tube that the pilot used to determine fuel levels prior to a flight earlier that day was not specifically designed for, or calibrated to, this specific airplane model. The investigation also determined that the pilot did not check the fuel quantity of the left tank when he switched to it upon entering the pattern, and that he switched to that tank only because after a previous momentary fuel flow interruption from the right tank, the owner had made switching to the left tank in the pattern a standard procedure for this airplane regardless of the fuel quantities in each tank.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during the initial climb due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's failure to properly monitor the airplane's fuel quantity and to correctly ascertain the fuel on board the airplane prior to takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA170
- Event ID
- 20090330X05818
- Case number
- WPR09LA170
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 8fd21d3326c4e6bf8dda71ff82e3e342ff390447443a063a3e9f8178292c2f92; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:53:09.221Z.