NYC96LA087 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From 4N1 to College Park Airport (CGS)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA087
- 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 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
- N231KS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4N1To College Park Airport (CGS), College Park, 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Total 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of West Milford, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
An annual maintenance inspection had just been completed on the airplane, and it was test flown by another pilot. The pilot/owner refueled the airplane, then he and three passengers boarded the airplane for a cross-country flight. The engine was run up, and the pilot departed on runway 24. During the initial climb, about 500 feet above the ground, a complete loss of engine power occurred. The pilot performed a 180 degree turn to land on runway 06; however. he decided that he could not reach the runway at the completion of the turn. He then lowered the landing gear, and stalled the airplane into trees, about 3/4 mile from the runway. Examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact failure of the airframe. The engine was test run and operated normally through all power ranges.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reason(s), which resulted in a forced landing on unsuitable terrain and subsequent collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA087
- Event ID
- 20001208X05658
- Case number
- NYC96LA087
- 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: 60778f716818270b529f02eaaecf6f7b62c0596e29406424f8afd2911dd5f53f; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:48:36.646Z.