ERA09CA366 · Cessna 210-5(205)
Cessna 210-5(205) · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Abbott Airport (VG58) to Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA366
- 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
- 0
- 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 210-5(205)
- 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
- N8272Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abbott Airport (VG58), Rocky Mount, VATo Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC), Peachtree City, 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
- 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 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- 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
The pilot stated that during preflight inspection of his Cessna 205, on the day prior to the accident, he had noticed that the seals on the fuel caps were worn. He replaced them with fuel caps borrowed from a friend’s airplane, a Cessna 182. Following the preflight, he departed for a local airport for fuel and then returned. Upon his return he had noticed "gas streaking on top of the wings," but assumed that the fuel vents had discharged some fuel. On the day of the accident he checked the weather and departed with a passenger for a cross-country flight. While en route, the engine "coughed;" he turned on the fuel boost pump and switched the fuel selector from the right to the left tank, after which the engine restarted. The pilot noted that the fuel gauges were fluctuating in-flight between empty and one-quarter tank. Believing that he had sufficient fuel on board, he made a descent and continued towards his destination. Minutes later the engine quit, the pilot switched the fuel selector from the left tank to the right tank, and made a turn for a local airport. Realizing that he would not make it to the airport, the pilot elected to land in a field. The airplane touched down on rough terrain and the nose strut sheared off. The airplane then dug into the ground and flipped over. The propeller, landing gear, wings, fuselage, and empennage incurred damage. The pilot stated that he had replaced the seals in the borrowed caps in order to prevent water from leaking into the fuel, but that the new seals did not fit as tightly and that fuel must have been "sucked" out of the tanks.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's use of improper fuel caps. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s selection of an unsuitable area for landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA366
- Event ID
- 20090624X61033
- Case number
- ERA09CA366
- 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: 84f07650731b1b6d488d11c51660765a39fc695cb9ba2821ae82828acd46aeaa; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:34:29.438Z.