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WPR19LA165 · Cessna T210 L

14 May 2019 · Medford, OR, United States

Cessna T210 L · Accident: fuel related during initial climb

From French Valley Airport (F70) to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
WPR19LA165
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 T210 L

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
N732DK
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta/Temecula, CATo not recorded
Aircraft age
About 43 years (built 1976)
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
Initial climb
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 related
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 he completed a cross-country flight. Shortly after departing on the return flight, the engine lost total power because he had “run out of fuel.” The pilot attempted to return to the airport to land. He switched fuel tanks but forgot to activate the fuel boost pump. Engine power was not restored, and the pilot landed in a field short of the runway, during which the airplane sustained substantial damage. A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector who responded to the site reported that the airplane sustained substantial damage to the tail. One fuel tank was dry, and the other contained fuel. The fuel onboard was not quantified by the FAA inspector, but the pilot reported that the airplane contained 20 gallons. Based on the information available, it is likely that the pilot exhausted the fuel supply in one tank, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.

Probable cause

A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record WPR19LA165
Event ID
20190610X74804
Case number
WPR19LA165
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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2019-05-15.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 7d42b5212ea4fab2215ad5cbe8ed592ca2c1e08acf2b40506ef740ceb40ca843; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:14:07.495Z.