CEN22LA320 · Cessna 210
Cessna 210 · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA320
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 210
- 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
- XB-RXC
- Operator
- Tretsa · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 62 years (built 1960)
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise flight to their destination, the weather deteriorated, and the pilot deviated to remain in visual flight conditions. A passenger informed the pilot that the fuel remaining was showing low. The pilot saw the low fuel reading and noted that headwind was stronger than expected. The airplane then encountered severe turbulence and strong downdrafts. Soon after, the engine began to run rough, and the pilot suspecting an impeding loss of engine power due to fuel, performed a forced landing to a field. Just prior to touchdown, the engine stopped producing power due to fuel exhaustion. The airplane landed and the right main landing gear collapsed. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the horizontal stabilizer, right elevator, and rudder. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. He also reported that prior to the flight he estimated the fuel available would be sufficient to reach their destination plus reserve fuel. He also stated that this flight was his first as pilot in command and that he did not know the exact fuel consumption for the airplane. The pilot suggested that the accident could have been avoided with better equipment as a weather radar and a GPS navigation system.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper in-flight planning and fuel management that resulted in the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA320
- Event ID
- 20220718105502
- Case number
- CEN22LA320
- 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: 4ab75bfdcb9c416ba61003f206053c372d90e4205720bfaab5586b65ce4d7ad6; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:28:05.851Z.