IAD96LA109 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA109
- 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 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
- N9199V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo Fayetteville Regional Airport - Grannis Field (FAY), Fayetteville, NC
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was advised that VFR flight was not recommended. He contacted Norfolk Approach Control and requested permission to transition through their airspace. He indicated that he intended to fly south along the coast in an attempt to avoid the approaching winter storm. The airplane disappeared from radar/radio contact while over the Chesapeake Bay. Radar data revealed that the airplane was in a descending right turn from 2100 feet MSL until it disappeared from radar contact at 800 feet MSL. Search efforts located airplane parts along the beach, and located the main wreckage in the Chesapeake Bay. The wreckage has not been fully recovered. The pilot did not possess an instrument rating. It was a dark night with snow and fog.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision making by continuing flight into known adverse weather conditions. Related factors were the dark night and the winter storm (snow and fog).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA109
- Event ID
- 20001208X05150
- Case number
- IAD96LA109
- 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 1996-01-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 94001e1991bdd4f76060d5981cd3460bdb0d7255c9035781968b0f1359ff94bf; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:28:06.254Z.