MIA98FA187 · Mooney M-20E
Mooney M-20E · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Donaldson Field Airport (GYH) to Morristown Regional Airport (MOR)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA98FA187
- 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
- 1 · 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 M-20E
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M-20
- 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
- N2709W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Donaldson Field Airport (GYH), Greenville, SCTo Morristown Regional Airport (MOR), Morristown, TN
- 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 · climb to 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 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in radio and radar contact with FAA Greenville/Spartanburg's Departure Control, climbing through 7,900 feet msl, to an assigned altitude of 9,500 feet msl, about 30 miles northwest of the Greenville/Spartanburg Airport, the pilot radioed that she had a very rough running engine and wanted vectors to the nearest airport. The controller supplied vectors to within 7 miles of the nearest airport, at which time the pilot chose a farmers field for a forced landing. The airplane collided with two pine trees within a stand of pines about 40 feet above ground, in a relatively flat, wings level, upright attitude. The airplane continued airborne for about 310 feet over a relatively clear field and then impact dense brush and 8- to 12-foot trees in an inverted attitude. Subsequent disassembly and examination of the engine and its associated components revealed no cause for the rough running engine. A finding of 0.056 ug/ml (ug/g) Diphenhydramine (antihistamine) was reported in the toxicological evaluation of the pilot's blood and urine.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons and the pilot not maintaining adequate clearance with objects (trees) during the emergency landing. Contributing factors were the pilot's impairment associated with the use of an antihistamine and the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA98FA187
- Event ID
- 20001211X10378
- Case number
- MIA98FA187
- 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: 0716c74000d62a30dc10086b64d00a59b9ecf0113397b67debca25598bf2bae1; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:31:54.567Z.