WPR11LA038 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Broken Bow Municipal Airport (KBBW) to Brigham City Regional Airport (KBMC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA038
- 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 T210N
- 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
- N6179Y
- Operator
- Justin A. Thompson · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Broken Bow Municipal Airport (KBBW), Broken Bow, NETo Brigham City Regional Airport (KBMC), Brigham City, UT
- 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
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
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 reported that during cruise flight, he heard and felt a solid “thump” that seemed to come from the engine compartment. Shortly thereafter, the oil pressure dropped and the engine eventually lost power. The pilot initiated a power-off forced landing on a rough and rutted dirt road. Although the initial touchdown was successful, due to the condition of the road, the pilot was unable to keep the airplane on the road surface, and it entered rough and uneven terrain. The nose of the airplane then dug into the terrain, and the airplane nosed over. The postaccident engine examination found that most of the engine oil had exited through a hole in the crankcase. Further examination found that the No. 1 connecting rod cap retaining bolt failed, ultimately resulting in the separation of the connecting rod from the crankshaft. The damage to the fracture surface on the portion of the retaining bolt that was recovered and the missing remainder of the bolt precluded any determination of bolt failure mode.
Probable cause
The failure of a connecting rod cap retaining bolt during cruise flight, which resulted in a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA038
- Event ID
- 20101106X84528
- Case number
- WPR11LA038
- 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: 6819ac34503fbf5f8bedb0cb76137e04625a10090a111c659119ddf861c8a1ce; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:32:43.218Z.