SEA99LA066 · Mooney M-20G
Mooney M-20G · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From 75S · Burlington, WA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA99LA066
- 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 M-20G
- 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
- N6700N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 75S · Burlington, WATo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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 › Contamination, other than water
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot attempted a forced landing after a loss of engine power. While attempting to restart the engine, he overshot the road he had selected for his forced landing, turned, retracted the landing gear, and 'waited for the impact.' After the wreckage was recovered, FAA inspectors ran the engine to 1600 rpm. They also removed the main fuel screen, and found it full of a 'gel-like' substance. The carburetor finger screen had captured some foreign matter, but was not judged to have been blocked. Upon disassembly of the carburetor, foreign material was found blocking the main metering jet orifice, along with some large particles, with a surface area similar to that of a small thumbtack. It could not be determined how those particles bypassed the finger screen. The airplane had been recently painted and then an annual inspection had been performed. The main fuel screen and the safety wire on the main fuel screen were covered with overspray. Fresh safety wire on the carburetor float bowl was consistent with the carburetor float bowl having been drained.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to carburetor contamination. Factors include the pilot's misjudgment of altitude and distance when he performed his forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA99LA066
- Event ID
- 20001212X18890
- Case number
- SEA99LA066
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-05-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2ad7436ff684b4961d09359de5f676baef4a76ccdc58e9bb1d5ca4c81467c4d3; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:11:48.885Z.