ATL97LA028 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Elizabeth City Regional Airport & Coast Guard Air Station (ECG) to Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL97LA028
- 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 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
- N737JC
- Operator
- Theodore R. Coleman · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elizabeth City Regional Airport & Coast Guard Air Station (ECG), Elizabeth City, NCTo Daytona Beach International Airport (DAB)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion; 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Fuel system, injector › Excessive flow/output
- Pilot in command › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Because the flight was taking longer than expected, the pilot elected to divert for fuel. While being vectored for an approach, the engine quit. During the ensuing forced landing, the airplane collided with trees and the ground. There was no evidence of a loss of fuel during the flight nor at the accident site, and the engine was operated following the accident. However, testing of the fuel injector servo revealed that its flow exceeded the maximum limit. The pilot stated he was using 11 gallons per hour for fuel usage planning. Using the power setting and altitude the pilot reported he used during the flight, the engine manufacturers operating manual indicated that the fuel usage would be between 11.3 and 13 gallons per hour (gph), depending on the mixture setting. Based on the elapsed time of the flight, the usable fuel supply in the airplane, and the excessive fuel servo flow, at 11.3 gph, about six gallons of fuel would have remained in the airplane. At 13 gph, more fuel than the usable capacity would have been needed. The fuel usage, therefore, exceeded the pilot's planned usage, discounting the servo's excessive flow rate.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight fuel consumption calculations, and the excessive flow of the fuel injector servo, that combined to result in fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL97LA028
- Event ID
- 20001208X07135
- Case number
- ATL97LA028
- 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: 76b23db5fb64f3d134905a30633d00a3be0357bda959f5f95344dcbda0972914; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:34:33.237Z.