ERA12LA306 · Cessna 210
Cessna 210 · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From PBI · West Palm Beach, FL to Tallahassee International Airport (TLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA306
- 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 210
- 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
- N6564X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PBI · West Palm Beach, FLTo Tallahassee International Airport (TLH), Tallahassee, FL
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Task performance
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, while in cruise flight about 3,000 feet above ground level, the airplane experienced a total loss of engine power. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and performed a forced landing. Subsequent examination revealed that the airplane's right main fuel tank was devoid of fuel and the left main fuel tank contained about 25 gallons of fuel. The fuel selector valve in the cockpit was found in the "OFF" position, and it was not possible to determine which fuel tank was selected when the engine lost power. Examination of the vegetation surrounding the accident location did not reveal any evidence of damage due to postaccident fuel leakage. Postaccident examination of the airplane, including an engine test run, did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Because the right tank had no fuel, it is likely that the fuel selector valve was selected to the right fuel tank, which resulted in all of the fuel in the right wing fuel tank being consumed and the subsequent total loss of engine power. Following the loss of engine power, even if the pilot had selected the left fuel wing tank, due to the airplane’s proximity to the ground, the fuel likely did not have time to reach the engine for an engine restart.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA306
- Event ID
- 20120428X40124
- Case number
- ERA12LA306
- 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: a46069d7255026eaa1de0cfad94f40bbe1eb416b633f8af1dd61c95ae4520e48; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:54:24.616Z.