CHI97FA196 · Mooney M20A
Mooney M20A · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA196
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20A
- 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
- N8394E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Anoka County-Blaine (Janes Field) Airport (ANE), Anoka, MNTo not recorded
- 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 control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Incapacitation(stroke)
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About four minutes after takeoff, a person in the airplane contacted the airport tower stating that they had an emergency. The speaker's voice was garbled and the emergency was not clearly stated. The tower controller cleared the airplane to return to the airport and to report downwind. The airplane flew over the tower and then flew out of sight. The pilot did not respond to any subsequent radio calls. Witnesses reported seeing the airplane flying about 30 feet above the surface of the lake. The airplane entered a steep climbing right-hand turn. The witnesses said the airplane climbed to about 50 feet above the water before descending into the water. One witness reported seeing the airplane contact the water with its right wing and engine at the same time. The airframe and engine examination revealed no anomalies that would have prevented flight. The medical examiner's autopsy showed the pilot suffered an intra cerebral hemorrhage (stroke).
Probable cause
pilot incapacitation due to a stroke.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA196
- Event ID
- 20001208X08306
- Case number
- CHI97FA196
- 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: 580d602252bca6cd1e4ac3e1d7cfd46f2c36b435455667eae1045616da889c8d; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:54:18.164Z.