CEN14CA106 · Cessna P210N N
Performance Associates Cessna P210N N · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during takeoff
From Stevens Field (PSO) to Stevens Field (PSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA106
- 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 P210N N
- 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
- N4817K
- Operator
- Performance Associates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stevens Field (PSO), Pagosa Springs, COTo Stevens Field (PSO), Pagosa Springs, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 35 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 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and his two passengers departed on a local pleasure flight. Right after takeoff, engine oil covered the windscreen and the engine began to lose power. According to a video of the accident, the pilot made a tear-drop turn in an attempt to land on the opposite runway. The airplane lost altitude during the turn and the pilot overshot the runway. The pilot said that as he crossed over the runway, he reduced power to idle. As the pilot attempted to turn back toward the runway, he turned off the master switch. The airplane descended quickly and landed adjacent to the runway in packed snow. The airplane landed hard on the main landing gear and with the right wing low before it slid for about 300 feet resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and right wing. The landing gear, right flap, left wing tip, and all three propeller blades were also damaged. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed the oil filler cap was not secured to the oil filler neck. The pilot said this was the first flight after the oil had been changed by a maintenance facility. He did not check the oil filler cap before the flight because it was not required per the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved preflight inspection checklist.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection which led to a loss of oil pressure and partial loss of engine power on takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to check the security of the oil filler cap prior to the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA106
- Event ID
- 20140109X84353
- Case number
- CEN14CA106
- 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: 6bf99ab46c26454cc2c742e24c44fa1ffa4c96ce85e6466f848b6cd87f210d25; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:14:57.122Z.