WPR15LA032 · Cessna T210M M
Cessna T210M M · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Grants Pass, OR to Long Beach, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA032
- 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 T210M 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
- N1593M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grants Pass, ORTo Long Beach, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1977)
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, during cruise flight, the engine began running roughly with smoke developing inside the cabin, followed by oil covering the windshield. The pilot stated that the engine continued to run and that his attempts to increase the power setting resulted in severe shaking and more smoke. The pilot initiated a forced landing in a nearby field. During the landing roll, the nosewheel landing gear dug into mud, and the airplane subsequently nosed over.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the Nos. 5 and 6 connecting rods were liberated from the crankshaft. The No. 6 connecting rod was thermally discolored and fractured, which was likely caused by oil starvation to the No. 6 connecting rod journal and bearing. The No. 5 connecting rod was also fractured; however, the connecting rod and bearing did not exhibit thermal discoloration or distress; the fracture likely resulted due to damage sustained when the No. 6 connecting rod fractured. The Nos. 1 and 2 connecting rods also exhibited thermal discoloration and distress, which likely resulted from the engine's continued operation after the liberation of the No. 6 connecting rod.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power during cruise flight due to the failure of the No. 6 connecting rod, which resulted from oil starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA032
- Event ID
- 20141103X11325
- Case number
- WPR15LA032
- 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: 486d2c2538f601dad297dccd39172f125f08907998d49a65fe8b3568b423bf39; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:54:30.692Z.