ERA12LA543 · Cessna T210M
Cessna T210M · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Suffolk Executive Airport (SFQ) to Olive Branch Airport (OLV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA543
- 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 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
- N761YN
- Operator
- Byrd Kenneth M
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Suffolk Executive Airport (SFQ), Suffolk, VATo Olive Branch Airport (OLV), Olive Branch, MS
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
- 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
When the pilot planned the long cross-country flight, he told flight service personnel that he expected to have to deviate due to thunderstorms. The pilot further stated that he would stop short of the destination airport if he could not safely navigate around thunderstorm cells. About 5 hours into the flight, the pilot notified an air traffic controller that he was going to deviate to a nearby alternate airport, which was in clear weather conditions. As a result, flight-following services were terminated when the airplane was about 10 miles from the alternate airport. According to global positioning system (GPS) data and a witness on the ground, the airplane flew safely over the alternate airport and circled; however, rather than land, the airplane continued to fly toward the original planned destination. About 10 minutes later, GPS data showed that the airplane reversed its course toward the alternate airport. The airplane’s engine subsequently lost total engine power and the airplane collided with trees during the ensuing forced landing. The pilot reported that he was unable to recall the accident sequence because of accident-related injuries.
Postaccident examination of the engine, which included a successful test-run, did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. At the time of the accident, the airplane had flown 5 hours 28 minutes without refueling. According to the pilot’s operating handbook for the accident airplane, the airplane's endurance at 70% power was about 5 hours 10 minutes, not accounting for fuel used during engine start, taxi, takeoff, or climb.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper fuel management and his decision to continue flight in deteriorating weather conditions with low fuel, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA543
- Event ID
- 20120903X22010
- Case number
- ERA12LA543
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-09-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ca5380db10865a45e1e8327060fc967ed811dc7d7fb362e4a28bec0aa9205376; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:38:52.643Z.