SEA97LA184 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From PIC · Pocatello, ID to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97LA184
- 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 M20C
- 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
- N9666M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PIC · Pocatello, IDTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while on the downwind leg, the engine lost power, quit, then restarted. The pilot tried unsuccessfully to switch fuel tanks, and when the airplane turned onto the base leg, the engine quit again. The pilot stated that he could not make the runway and turned toward an open field. Just prior to touchdown, the engine regained power, and the pilot turned back toward the runway. The engine quit again and the airplane struck an empty tanker truck which severed the right wing from the fuselage. Postcrash investigation revealed that there was no evidence of a fuel spill or fuel smell around the right wing. There was no fuel in the fuel line to the carburetor and the carburetor fuel bowl contained less than one tablespoon of fuel. The left wing contained approximately 15 gallons of fuel in the fuel tank. After the wreckage was retrieved, the engine was prepared for an engine run. Fuel was supplied via the left wing. The fuel pump was activated and the engine was started. The engine ran smoothly for three minutes before it was shut down. Both fuel and oil pressure gages were indicating in the normal range.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel management which resulted in fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97LA184
- Event ID
- 20001208X08744
- Case number
- SEA97LA184
- 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: 6f82e6b7154c1ed5b1e1c7371f76f6cb02f7f2169177dd3fa34757ae2e5dd832; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:54:24.680Z.