WPR12LA414 · Cessna T210N
Cessna T210N · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Meadows Field (BFL) to Redlands Municipal Airport (REI)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA414
- 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
- N6493N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Meadows Field (BFL), Bakersfield, CATo Redlands Municipal Airport (REI), Redlands, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following departure, the pilot banked the airplane to align with the right crosswind of the traffic pattern. He observed smoke entering the cockpit, and the engine began to produce only partial power. The pilot chose to return to the airport, but, due to the power loss, the airplane was unable to reach the runway. The pilot landed the airplane in a field outside the airport's perimeter. The exhaust clamp was found fractured. An area of the fracture appeared flat with granular features, but no clear evidence of preexisting cracks or progressive crack growth was observed. Circumferential cracks were noted in the retainer segments. Although these cracks may have been preexisting, they were not long enough to allow separation of the joint before the band fracture. The exhaust clamp likely fractured due to overstress loading of the joint during the landing. The cause of the in-flight fire could not be determined from the remaining evidence.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during the initial climb due to an in-flight fire of undetermined origin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA414
- Event ID
- 20120911X12322
- Case number
- WPR12LA414
- 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: 970ec3a80d3f177b507a6c67d2d76e367d8b2e8d1dcea01b09ec58fa2d85bbfb; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:49:54.192Z.