AirNet Systems Cessna 210N accident
Cessna 210N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Valdosta Regional Airport (VLD) to Tampa International Airport (TPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA076
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 210N
- 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
- N5307A
- Operator
- AirNet Systems
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Valdosta Regional Airport (VLD), Valdosta, GATo Tampa International Airport (TPA), Tampa, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1979)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Approach
- 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
As the on-demand air cargo flight approached the destination airport, the pilot advised air traffic control that the airplane's engine had "lost oil pressure." Subsequently, an air traffic controller cleared the flight to land on an alternate runway. The airplane impacted a berm short of the runway threshold, which resulted in serious injury to the pilot and substantial damage to the airframe.
Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed that engine oil was present from the windscreen to the vertical stabilizer and that the engine case had been breached near the Nos. 4 and 6 cylinders. Detailed examination of the engine revealed signatures consistent with oil starvation and a fatigue failure of the No. 4 connecting rod and connecting rod cap. Although the metallurgical hardness of one of the No. 4 connecting rod bolts was slightly below its specified value, this likely did not contribute to its separation, and it likely failed in overstress after the fatigue-related separation of the mating connecting rod. The engine's oil sump was breached and only contained residual traces of engine oil; the preaccident quantity of oil within the engine could not be determined. Examination of the engine's oil galleys and passages revealed that they were intact, clear, and unrestricted. The root cause for the loss of lubrication and subsequent fatigue failure of the No. 4 connecting rod could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the fatigue failure of the No. 4 connecting rod. Contributing to the accident was a likely loss of lubrication for reasons that could not be determined during a postaccident engine examination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA076
- Event ID
- 20131220X80310
- Case number
- ERA14LA076
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-12-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d6aef2c240793ca494ee915c5cfd61748ce2bb965c86e02298bb3fb08e075029; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:12:03.639Z.