CHI98LA104 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) to Sioux Gateway Airport / Brigadier General Bud Day Field (SUX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA104
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N6235U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SDTo Sioux Gateway Airport / Brigadier General Bud Day Field (SUX), Sioux City, IA
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel system, carburetor › Ice
- Pilot in command › Carburetor heat, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While cruising at 500 to 1,200 feet agl, the engine began running rough. The pilot adjusted the fuel mixture. Ten minutes later the engine ran rough again at which time the pilot applied carburetor heat. The engine then lost all power. A forced landing was made in a snow covered field. Post accident inspection revealed ice inside the airbox.
Probable cause
the pilot's delay in applying carburetor heat. A factor associated with the accident was the low altitude at which the pilot was flying which limited his landing site selections when the loss of power occurred.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA104
- Event ID
- 20001211X09639
- Case number
- CHI98LA104
- 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: 26dc652ac50e24de4fc7a81a0824a6de2adec7abc97142fc9d1627bb4d1f400e; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:59:40.569Z.