Cessna 210 Centurion / Turbo Centurion 210C; 210D
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 200; Flight Crew Total 17500; Flight Crew Type 35
Aircraft Equipment Problem Critical; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Illness / Injury; Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; Flight Crew Inflight Shutdown; Flight Crew Landed in Emergency Condition
Human Factors
I was out for the afternoon with the aircraft owner. On board were my son and his two grandsons. We had just refueled and topped off our fuel tanks after attending a 'fly-in.' We were in cruise flight heading northbound paralleling the state highway when we experienced a loss of engine power. I turned to the aircraft owner and asked what happened and he said: 'I want to see if we can glide to 'the reservoir.' I thought he was joking because the reservoir was at least 8 miles away and we were only 2;000 FT AGL at the most. It was after a moment or two that I realized he was not thinking clearly and; so I began basic emergency procedures.I noticed that he had moved the mixture to 'cut off' instead of simply retarding the throttle. I first pushed the mixture to full rich; prop forward; and then attempted this restart; but the engine was unresponsive to our efforts. Because of the time utilized in attempting a restart and the pending emergency landing we had insufficient time to complete an Emergency Checklist. Unable to reach the hard surface road we elected to land parallel to the highway as much as possible. We extended the landing gear prior to touchdown and landed nose first followed by the main gear. The impact was sufficiently hard to collapse all three gears.
Two pilots in a Cessna T210 were forced to conduct a gear down off field emergency landing when they experienced sudden engine failure at about 2;000 FT AGL.