ERA15LA258 · Cessna T210L
Cessna T210L · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Albert S Nader Regional Airport (N66) to Albert S Nader Regional Airport (N66)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA258
- 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
- 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
- N59024
- Operator
- Schoene Edward C
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albert S Nader Regional Airport (N66), Oneonta, NYTo Albert S Nader Regional Airport (N66), Oneonta, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, in preparation for a local flight, he performed a preflight inspection of the airplane, which included checking the fuel gauges, but that he did not look into the fuel tanks to verify the fuel quantity. He recalled that both fuel gauges indicated below 1/2 full. The engine start, taxi, and run-up were performed uneventfully; however, several minutes after takeoff, the engine lost all power. The pilot was unable to restart the engine and performed a forced landing to a cornfield about 6 miles north of the departure airport. The forced landing was performed with the landing gear retracted, and the airplane came to rest upright, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing and fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the airplane. Due to injuries sustained in the accident, the pilot had no further recollection of the accident flight.
Examination of the wreckage revealed that the left main fuel tank had about 5 gallons of fuel remaining and that the right main fuel tank had no fuel. Additionally, the fuel selector was found positioned to the right main fuel tank. Further, no fuel was found in the fuel line connecting the gascolator to the engine-driven fuel pump and in the fuel line connecting the engine-driven fuel pump to the fuel flow divider.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection and fuel planning, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA258
- Event ID
- 20150707X05738
- Case number
- ERA15LA258
- 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 2015-07-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a7f599ca3dc02ad55bf1da3dbb0564207c537831049021d4469ee0698d8ef81a; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:29:51.285Z.