CEN09LA233 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU) to Georgetown, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA233
- 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
- N210BF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Georgetown Executive Airport at Johnny Gantt Field (GTU), Georgetown, TXTo Georgetown, 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
- Approach
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was preparing to land when the engine lost power. He attempted to perform a forced landing to a road west of the airport. During the forced landing, the airplane impacted trees and then the road resulting in substantial damage to the airplane. An examination of the airplane revealed that the left main fuel tank was empty; however, the right main fuel tank and tip tank contained fuel. According to a telephone conversation with the pilot, during his pre landing preparation he noted that the left fuel tank was "low" and switched from the left fuel tank to the right fuel tank. Shortly thereafter he noted that the engine had lost power. He attempted to restart the engine by turning the auxiliary fuel pump on and "cranking" the engine. According to the emergency procedures section in the Pilot's Operating Handbook the correct in-flight engine restart procedure requires the pilot to maintain 85 knots indicated airspeed, check fuel quantity, switch the fuel selector to the fullest tank, mixture set to rich, auxiliary pump to the "on" position for three to five seconds with the throttle open, then off, ignition switch to both, and advance the throttle slowly. An examination of the airplane fuel system revealed no contaminants and no anomalies. An examination and test run of the engine revealed no anomalies. The engine data monitoring unit showed a loss of fuel flow prior to the accident.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's inadequate fuel management. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's improper engine restart procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA233
- Event ID
- 20090401X13024
- Case number
- CEN09LA233
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 1a29c489e7bc632bf93d414cb87e5eb0ca173c391df75df23f509d937a09330e; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:53:35.819Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. City name split in two; the departure field and the location record the same place as Georgetown, TX.