FLIGHT FINDINGSAVIATION OCCURRENCE MAP
Back to map

ERA20LA028 · Cessna T210 L

1 Nov 2019 · Odessa, TX, United States

Green Oak Llp Cessna T210 L · Accident: fuel starvation en route

From Odessa Schlemeyer Field (ODO) to Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport (AMA)

Report a problem

Event

NTSB case
ERA20LA028
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
N732JW
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Odessa Schlemeyer Field (ODO), Odessa, TXTo Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport (AMA), Amarillo, TX
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
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
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 › Action/decision

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 stated that he did not recall many details of the accident but reported that, about 10 minutes into the flight, the engine lost partial power. He checked the throttle, fuel, and cowl flap positions, and then performed a forced landing to a road, during which the airplane impacted a hole, nosed over, and came to rest inverted, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage and wings. After the accident, 2 cups of fuel were removed from the right wing and 25 gallons of fuel was removed from the left wing. The fuel tanks were not breached, there was no fuel staining on the ground in the vicinity of the wreckage, and there was no smell of fuel at the accident site. The fuel selector was found in the right tank position. Examination of the engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Given the minimal amount of fuel in the intact right tank at the accident site and the position of the fuel selector, it is likely that the engine was starved of fuel, which resulted in a loss of engine power.

Probable cause

A loss of engine power due to fuel starvation and the pilot’s mismanagement of the available fuel.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ERA20LA028
Event ID
20191102X73517
Case number
ERA20LA028
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, cause areas. 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: fed8df6c71aadb95931e7eb73e611f81429e1121675403faa4037af9f648f513; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:32:31.784Z.