CEN16LA107 · Cessna P210N
Cessna P210N · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY) to Easterwood Field (CLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA107
- 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
- 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
- N732FU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (GKY), Arlington, TXTo Easterwood Field (CLL), College Station, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1980)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that, 10 miles from the destination airport, the passengers heard a loud "clank" and smoke entered the cockpit. Shortly thereafter, the engine experienced a total loss of power and the propeller stopped turning. The pilot selected a field as a forced landing site, but the airplane impacted trees and terrain at the edge of the field. The pilot and passengers were able to extricate themselves through the right side passenger window.
A postaccident engine examination revealed a catastrophic failure of the engine crankshaft between the No. 2 main bearing journal and the No. 2 connecting rod journal. The damage displayed on the No. 2 bearing was consistent with the bearing having shifted and spun. Several of the bearing supports displayed fretting near the through-bolt holes. An accurate measurement of the preaccident through-bolt torques could not be determined due to the loads subjected upon the crankcase when the crankshaft failed. Review of maintenance records indicated that the through bolts were properly torqued during the remanufacturing process nearly 1,000 flight hours before the accident and that there was no record of major work performed on the engine since that time; however, the wear signatures displayed on the bearing supports indicated that the crankcase halves were shifting in a manner consistent with improper torque of the through bolts.
Probable cause
A failure of the crankshaft due to improper torque of the crankcase through bolts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA107
- Event ID
- 20160217X10228
- Case number
- CEN16LA107
- 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: 9cc3e8fa308dd296998b4bc332e521a87ba20e2aef33d6d59f2bee6684f2e740; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:10:04.405Z.