ERA23LA128 · Cessna 210 A
Cessna 210 A · Accident: fuel starvation on approach
From Pittsburgh/Butler Regional Airport (BTP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA128
- 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 210 A
- 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
- N6597X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsburgh/Butler Regional Airport (BTP), Butler, PATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 63 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
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern base
- 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 › Aircraft systems
- 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 was picking up the airplane for its owner after an annual inspection had been completed. During his preflight inspection he noted that both fuel tank fuel gauges indicated that they were ½ to ¾ full. While he was checking the fuel selector valve the “brittle plastic handle broke off” with the left fuel tank still selected. The pilot called the airplane owner to inform him of the situation and advised that he would add more fuel to the left fuel tank in order to make the anticipated 45-minute flight without switching fuel tanks. He subsequently had 4 gallons of fuel added to the fuel tanks and acquired a small crescent wrench that he planned to use in-lieu of the broken plastic fuel selector handle if necessary. He subsequently departed and climbed the airplane to a cruise altitude of about 6,500 feet. About 20 nautical miles from the destination, he noted that the left fuel tank quantity indication was “bouncing between ¼ and empty” and he decided to change to the right fuel tank for the remainder of the flight. He was subsequently unable to use the crescent wrench to change the fuel selector valve position after several attempts. About 2 nautical miles from the destination airport, while approaching the runway to land, the airplane’s engine lost power completely and the pilot performed a forced landing to a field. The airplane nosed over during the landing and the aft portion of the fuselage left, as well as the wing, were substantially damaged.
After the accident, recovery personnel reported that after lifting the airplane upright, they noted fuel staining around the fuel caps of both wing fuel tanks, that the right fuel tank was absent of fuel, and the left fuel tank only contained only a trace amount of fuel. They also operated the fuel selector valve with their own adjustable wrench (the broken fuel selector handle and the crescent wrench used by the pilot could not be located in the wreckage) and found that it operated normally. Based on this information, it is likely that the loss of engine power was due to fuel starvation after the pilot exhausted all usable fuel from the left fuel tank and was unable to select the right fuel tank; or that the pilot had inadvertently moved the fuel selector to an intermediate position in his attempts to use a crescent wrench to adjust the fuel selector valve.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation. Contributing was the pilot’s decision to depart on the flight with an inoperative fuel selector valve.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA128
- Event ID
- 20230221106747
- Case number
- ERA23LA128
- 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: 3e504707762f3acaa7f31703e73e8d0917b640231f3fb6a695bb4afb8f0383c9; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:20:47.419Z.