CEN13LA056 · Cessna 210L
Cessna 210L · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during an emergency descent
From San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI) to Baytown Airport (HPY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA056
- 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 210L
- 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
- N732BL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Marcos Regional Airport (HYI), San Marcos, TXTo Baytown Airport (HPY), Baytown, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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 (total)
- 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 the airplane was in cruise flight at 7,000 ft mean sea level when he noticed that the engine oil pressure had dropped to an unacceptable level. He then attempted to divert to land at a nearby airport. However, when the airplane was on the downwind leg and after the landing gear had been extended, the engine experienced a total loss of power, so the pilot made an off-airport landing. During the landing on a soft, plowed field, the airplane flipped over and then came to rest inverted.
Review of maintenance records revealed that recent maintenance, which included the replacement of the engine oil filter, had been performed on the engine. A postaccident examination of the airframe revealed an abundance of engine oil on the airplane's belly; the oil extended from the engine compartment to the tail surfaces. A teardown examination of the engine revealed that a connecting rod had released from the crankshaft due to lubrication distress. An examination of the oil filter revealed that the oil filter adapter fiber seal washer was torn where the adaptor attaches to the oil pump housing and that the washer and the oil filter adaptor were misaligned. The improper installation of the oil filter adaptor likely caused the loss of oil to the engine and the subsequent total loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to the loss of oil to the engine. Contributing to the accident was maintenance personnel’s improper installation of the engine oil filter adaptor, which resulted in the loss of oil to the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA056
- Event ID
- 20121109X12955
- Case number
- CEN13LA056
- 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: 77d13c0ffa3eefe7d9561d528a46d05563cd040b8144b61339d7b2382998bdd9; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:23:22.370Z.