CEN21LA341 · Cessna T210F
Cessna T210F · Accident: fuel related during initial climb
From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS) to Meadow Lake Airport (FLY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA341
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 T210F
- 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
- N6162R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, COTo Meadow Lake Airport (FLY), Peyton, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the climb after takeoff, the engine began to run rough. To restore full engine power, the pilot selected the left and right fuel tanks numerous times. The engine subsequently experienced a complete loss of power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a field about one mile south of the airport during which the airplane impacted terrain. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left horizontal stabilizer. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. A postaccident examination revealed the airplane’s left fuel tank contained useable fuel. The airplane’s right fuel was empty (except for unusable fuel), which resulted in fuel starvation and the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s fuel mismanagement that resulted in a complete loss of engine power during climb and subsequent impact with terrain during a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA341
- Event ID
- 20210729103579
- Case number
- CEN21LA341
- 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, 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: 1f718291a49e9a1b0c198eeb5e80a995592413a9eeda05c9374c295a31e5eacf; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:20:44.529Z.