BFO96LA014 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN) to Freeway Airport (W00)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO96LA014
- 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
- 0 · 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
- N5744Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN), Easton, MDTo Freeway Airport (W00), Mitchellville, MD
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Fuel system, line › Leak
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the airplane was in cruise flight at 1,400 feet MSL when the engine lost partial power. All attempts to regain engine power were unsuccessful. During the forced landing to a field the airplane collided with trees. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction. The left fuel tank was found empty, and the right fuel tank was half full. The engine operated satisfactorily during a test run; however, it was noted that fuel was leaking from the fuel line between the engine driven fuel pump and the fuel injector. Further examination of the fuel line revealed it was brittle.
Probable cause
the partial loss of engine power due to a leaking fuel line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO96LA014
- Event ID
- 20001207X04651
- Case number
- BFO96LA014
- 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: f3c27eb9ea561725149f061861433f5cc747f8711108ce68b0ab9f9db9a96b89; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:07:24.455Z.