CEN13LA054 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From CWS · Conway, AR to University Oxford Airport (UOX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA054
- 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
- 1 · 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 P210N
- 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
- N887JA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CWS · Conway, ARTo University Oxford Airport (UOX), Oxford, MS
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1981)
- 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 · climb to 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 › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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
The airplane experienced a total loss of engine power during climb after takeoff when it was about 300 to 500 feet about ground level. The airplane then impacted trees and terrain about 300 feet north of the departure runway end. A witness stated that the airplane stalled during the climb and banked "hard" right before impacting the ground. There was no fuel smell and no foliage discoloration consistent with a fuel spill at the accident site. Neither of the two header fuel tanks contained fuel. Examination of the engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, which failed to detect the lack of fuel and resulted in fuel exhaustion during climb, and the pilot's subsequent failure to maintain airplane control, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low altitude from which he was unable to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA054
- Event ID
- 20121107X60747
- Case number
- CEN13LA054
- 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: 68e0bbbc484cf989a89a8e21015f38e17b00159ee855c58c6d12f9c2bb8f510b; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:47:47.280Z.