CEN14LA076 · Cessna T210L M
Montrose Air Cessna T210L M · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Scott Airport (M80) to Oak Grove, LA
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA076
- 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 T210L M
- 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
- N21ME
- Operator
- Montrose Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Scott Airport (M80), Tallulah, LATo Oak Grove, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 systems
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed for a nearby private airstrip for an expected 12-minute flight. During cruise flight, at 500 feet above the ground , the left fuel tank was low on fuel so the pilot switched the fuel selector to the right fuel tank. After the engine began to "sputter," the pilot turned on the fuel boost pump; however, the problem continued until the engine lost power. He then elected to conduct a forced landing into a field. During the landing, the landing gear touched down on the wet ground, and the airplane nosed over. Examination of the airplane revealed that the left fuel tank was empty and the right fuel tank contained an undetermined amount of fuel. There was no evidence of any mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot's application of the fuel boost pump likely flooded the engine with fuel after switching fuel tanks, causing the engine to lose power.
Probable cause
The pilot's mismanagement of available fuel and incorrect use of the fuel boost pump which resulted in a total loss of engine power at a low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA076
- Event ID
- 20131205X25249
- Case number
- CEN14LA076
- 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: 7c8aa2200d8e5610fc07398407989efbef057ca8b3d1122a982c884c32899eb6; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:09:52.021Z.