MIA95FA175 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 0R9 · Hammond, LA to Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA95FA175
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Unknown
Mooney M20F
- 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
- N6941V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0R9 · Hammond, LATo Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), Opa-locka, FL
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING FLIGHT, THE PILOT OBTAINED VFR FLIGHT FOLLOWING FROM JACKSONVILLE ARTCC AND WAS ADVISED OF ADVERSE WEATHER ALONG HIS INTENDED ROUTE. THE PILOT QUESTIONED THE CONTROLLER ABOUT A BUILDUP THAT WAS 15-20 MILES AHEAD. RADAR DATA INDICATED THAT THE AIRPLANE WAS HEADING 123 DEGREES, AND ITS GROUND SPEED WAS 125 KNOTS. THE CONTROLLER SUGGESTED THE PILOT FLY SOUTH FOR ABOUT 25 MILES FOR WEATHER AVOIDANCE. RADAR DATA OVER THE NEXT 7 MINUTES INDICATED THE HEADING CHANGED ONLY 25 DEGREES TO A HEADING OF 148 DEGREES. ABOUT 2 MINUTES BEFORE RADAR AND RADIO CONTACT WERE LOST, THE PILOT ADVISED THE CONTROLLER THAT THE FLIGHT WAS EXPERIENCING TURBULENCE. AT ABOUT 2035, THE AIRPLANE ENTERED A RAPID DESCENT FROM 9200 FEET TO 1100 FEET MSL, THEN RADIO AND RADAR CONTACT WERE LOST. WRECKAGE FROM THE AIRPLANE WAS LOCATED IN THE GULF OF MEXICO NEAR THE LOCATION OF THE LAST RADAR CONTACT. REVIEW OF WEATHER RECORDS INDICATE A RAPIDLY DEVELOPING VIP LEVEL 3 TO LEVEL 5 THUNDERSTORM IN THAT AREA.
Probable cause
CONTINUED FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO KNOWN ADVERSE WEATHER (VIP LEVEL THREE THUNDERSTORM). THE THUNDERSTORM WAS A RELATED FACTOR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA95FA175
- Event ID
- 20001207X04020
- Case number
- MIA95FA175
- 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 1995-07-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b8e05c737c1b2b870cc325b1ed49a9fe555b483830f26fd4b40255760b8134b5; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:42:54.080Z.