NYC99LA093 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 74D · Moundsville, WV to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA093
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Mooney M20E
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N1987Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 74D · Moundsville, WVTo Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KY
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel contamination
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(cardiovascular)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot purchased the airplane on the day of the accident, and added 45 gallons of fuel to it. He took four samples of fuel from the left tank before it was free of water. No contamination was found in the right tank. After takeoff the engine ran rough and the pilot returned to the airfield. On the ground the engine smoothed out, and the pilot departed again, stopped once for minor maintenance, then continued on. En route, the fuel pressure dropped, and the engine began running rough again. The pilot could not maintain altitude, and executed a forced landing to a road. The pilot deplaned, talked to several people, and made a telephone call. Afterwards, the pilot said he felt cold and faint, then collapsed, and could not be revived. During inspection of the airplane's fuel system, about 3 ounces of dirty water were drained from the left wing. Fuel from the right wing was free of contaminants. Fuel injector lines initially produced fuel that was rust-colored, with water in it. Filtered fuel left a pink, paraffin-like residue. An autopsy revealed the pilot had an enlarged heart, and severe coronary arteriosclerosis with arteriosclerotic heart disease.
Probable cause
Contaminated fuel which resulted in the forced landing, and a heart attack from an adrenaline rush that interacted with preexisting coronary disease which resulted in the pilot's death.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA093
- Event ID
- 20001205X00556
- Case number
- NYC99LA093
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 873f007a64f57daf880d956460d00796a54f1e99d0a76eb9cc4ed2b7eb17e7d8; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:09:38.055Z.