ERA10LA159 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Buckingham Field (FL59) to MidCoast Regional Airport at Wright Army Airfield (LHW)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA159
- 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
- N4797K
- Operator
- Mcdermott Wayne e
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buckingham Field (FL59), Fort Myers, FLTo MidCoast Regional Airport at Wright Army Airfield (LHW), Hinesville, 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 25 minutes into a cross-country flight, the airplane lost all engine power, and the pilot made an emergency landing in a field. The airplane collided with a power line pole and was consumed by a postcrash fire. Disassembly and examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft separated at the forward end of the No. 2 connecting rod journal. According to laboratory analysis, the fatigue fracture of the crankshaft was due to bearing wear and bearing shift. The maintenance records were destroyed by the postcrash fire, and no other history on the engine was obtained.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to a fatigue fracture of the crankshaft resulting from worn bearings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA159
- Event ID
- 20100303X84912
- Case number
- ERA10LA159
- 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. 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: e1240b696fecac20c5c070af969fd86d6cf9cb67e9ad710db15b6dd55c081124; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:42:55.499Z.