Unknown Fuel System Problem Leads to Unfortunate Ending

If you don’t know where it went, is it really gone?

Peter Garrison

Thursday, September 10, 2020 at 03:35 PM ET

Verified

Low on fuel without a good place to put down leaves a pilot with few options. Jose Mizrahi/Unsplash

Key Takeaways:

A Cessna 210L crashed due to fuel exhaustion, attributed to a rapid, previously undetected leak in the engine's fuel pump seal that drastically increased fuel consumption.
The pilot faced a critical dilemma as fuel gauges indicated dangerously low levels far short of the destination, despite theoretically having enough fuel for the trip.
The incident underscores the importance of pilots trusting actual fuel gauge readings over expected performance and making decisive choices to land when fuel is critically low, rather than succumbing to "wishful thinking."

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A Cessna 210L left Bozeman, Montana, with five men aboard and full tanks for a 700-nautical-mile flight to San Carlos, California.

Four hours and 48 minutes later, the airplane crashed near Lodi, California, 60 nm short of its destination. The 1,200-hour pilot, 60 years old, died two weeks later of his injuries; the four passengers, also seriously injured, survived. One of them told the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident investigators that they were about 30 minutes short of the destination when the pilot said that they were getting low on fuel, and he was going to turn around and land at an airport they had just passed. Shortly thereafter, he announced that they needed to find a road to land on. The engine then quit. The pilot switched tanks and tried to restart it but failed.