CEN11CA132 · Cessna T210L
Cessna T210L · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Tucson International Airport (KTUS) to Eastland Municipal Airport (KETN)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11CA132
- 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 T210L
- 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
- N210BH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Tucson International Airport (KTUS), Tucson Intnl, AZTo Eastland Municipal Airport (KETN), Eastland, 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a 615-nautical mile cross-country flight that reportedly would take him about four hours and fifteen minutes to complete. He reported that he had about five and one-half hours of fuel on-board, and that he received a weather briefing before departing. The briefing indicated that he would encounter marginal visual flight conditions en route to his destination. During the flight, stronger than expected wind conditions were adding about 10 minutes to his flight, and about 50 miles from his destination, he started his descent from 9,500 feet with a solid cloud layer below him. He contacted the air traffic controller and received an instrument rules flight plan for an approach to his destination. He said that as he broke out from the clouds, it was too late to make a landing at the airport, and the engine lost power. He switched fuel tanks and the engine re-started. He said that the controller asked him if he had enough fuel to a make an alternate airport, located about 44 miles away, to which he responded that the right fuel tank showed one-third full. About 3 miles from the alternate airport the engine lost power again, this time the pilot could not get it restarted. He then elected to conduct a forced landing on a road. During the forced landing the airplane’s horizontal stabilizer impacted a signpost, causing substantial damage to the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11CA132
- Event ID
- 20101229X04951
- Case number
- CEN11CA132
- 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: 1ae07921e410c9107cf668e1621979c576285a95ad482d4812d21cbfa9138ffa; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:38:59.363Z.