CEN10LA489 · Meyers Industries Inc 200C
Samson Air Meyers Industries Inc 200C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From FTG · Denver, CO to Propwash Airport (16X)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA489
- 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
Meyers Industries Inc 200C
- Aircraft type
- Meyers 200
- 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
- N189M
- Operator
- Samson Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FTG · Denver, COTo Propwash Airport (16X), Justin, 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 departed with full fuel tanks on a long cross-country flight. As the pilot approached his destination airport, he initiated a rapid descent by reducing the throttle to idle and lowering the nose of the airplane. At some point, the engine stopped producing power, but the pilot didn't realize this until he was on approach to the airport because the propeller was windmilling and he was wearing a noise-cancelling headset. The pilot was unable to restart the engine or maintain altitude. As the airplane glided toward the airport, the pilot realized that the gear warning horn had not activated when he pulled the throttle to idle and had to quickly extend the landing gear manually. The pilot was unable to fully extend the gear and landed short of the runway in a pasture. The nosewheel struck a hole and separated from the airframe and the left main gear collapsed, resulting in substantial damage to the airframe. The airplane came to rest upright with the left wing tip on the ground. The propeller, left wing tip, and the leading edge of the left wing were also damaged; however, the four wing fuel tanks were not breached. The right outboard fuel tank was found empty, the right inboard fuel tank was 3/4 full, the left inboard tank was full, and the left outboard tank was 3/4 full. The fuel selector was found set to the right outboard tank position. The pilot stated that the fuel selector was set to the left inboard tank (which he estimated had 15 minutes of fuel remaining) when the engine quit and he had switched to a full tank to try and restart the engine. He said that even though the outboard fuel tanks looked empty after the accident he still had about 1.5 hours of fuel remaining and that he did not run any of the tanks out of fuel. A postaccident examination of the fuel system, ignition, and throttle assemblies revealed no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot's improper fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA489
- Event ID
- 20100820X54455
- Case number
- CEN10LA489
- 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: aaed1f5a681d3c3a5a09426138a80aed1546928d3fb718ca0ffe53971794f868; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:54:20.132Z.