Flight Express Cessna T210M accident
Cessna T210M · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS) to Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA202
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 T210M
- 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
- N6149B
- Operator
- Flight Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS), Cahokia, ILTo Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport (MKC), Kansas City, MO
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was in cruise flight when the engine began to run rough and lose power. Smoke began to enter the cockpit, and engine oil covered the windshield. The engine ultimately lost all power. The pilot executed a forced landing to a roadway, and the left wing struck a bridge guardrail. Examination of the engine revealed a fatigue failure of the crankshaft initiating at the No. 6 connecting rod journal. Further examination determined that several crankcase main bearing saddles were oversized compared to the required specifications. As a result, the crankshaft was not adequately supported within the crankcase during operation, which precipitated the fatigue failure of the crankshaft. Records indicated that the engine was initially manufactured with one oversized saddle bore. The manufacturer subsequently rebuilt the engine, which was installed on the accident airplane. At the time of the accident, the engine had accumulated 1,303.5 hours since it was rebuilt.
Probable cause
Latent dimensional discrepancies related to the engine crankcase main bearing saddle bores, which precipitated the fatigue failure of the crankshaft and a complete loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the engine manufacturer's failure to properly identify and address the crankcase discrepancies when the engine was rebuilt.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA202
- Event ID
- 20110224X54547
- Case number
- CEN11FA202
- 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: 706c217844e9d350074636cb11d1f584fa36db5b0004407cda9a369de55e145a; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:50:43.616Z.