SEA94FA060 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL) to Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (MFR)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA94FA060
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20K
- 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
- N1093M
- Operator
- Hicks, Roy H. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL), Red Bluff, CATo Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (MFR), Medford, OR
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, poor
- Weather condition › Icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING A NIGHT TIME CROSS COUNTRY FLIGHT IN REPORTED ICING CONDITIONS, THE PILOT REPORTED TO ATC THAT HE WAS PICKING UP ICE AND THE ENGINE WAS LOSING POWER. ATC ATTEMPTED TO MANEUVER THE AIRPLANE TO LOWER TERRAIN, HOWEVER, THE PILOT WAS UNABLE TO SEE THE TERRAIN FOR A REFERENCE AND EVENTUALLY DROPPED BELOW RADAR CONTACT. A WITNESS OBSERVED THE AIRPLANE FLYING ALONG THE EDGE OF A LAKE AND APPEARED TO BE MAINTAINING ALTITUDE. THE AIRPLANE THEN COLLIDED WITH THE WEST SIDE OF A VALLEY WALL AT THE NORTH END OF THE LAKE NEAR A DAM.
Probable cause
POOR IN-FLIGHT PLANNING/DECISION AND ICING CONDITIONS. FACTORS TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: SELECTED FLIGHT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER, DARK NIGHT, AND MOUNTAINOUS TERRAIN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA94FA060
- Event ID
- 20001206X00811
- Case number
- SEA94FA060
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-02-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac11e030926b5f4640a05e2f902c3d397d5ee38fc0d1c4bee6460efb6117fca3; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:14:54.703Z.