NYC99LA202 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: propeller failure/malfunction en route
From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM) to Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA202
- 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 M20E
- 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
- N3243F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elmira Corning Regional Airport (ELM), Elmira, NYTo Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport (ROC), Rochester, NY
- 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
- Propeller failure/malfunction
- 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
- Propeller system/accessories, blade › Corroded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 20 minutes into the flight, the pilot heard a loud bang, then saw an object go by the windshield. The airplane started to shake so badly that the door popped open, and oil appeared on the windshield. The pilot shut down the engine, the shaking ceased, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a hilly field. Post-flight examination revealed that approximately 27 inches of one propeller blade was missing. Examination of the remaining fracture surface revealed features typical of fatigue cracking, and metallographic examination of the origin area revealed the grain structure and the presence of intergranular corrosion cracks. Review of maintenance logbooks failed to reveal any indication of 'prop strike,' overspeed, or any other catastrophic event to the propeller. On August 20, 1989, the propeller was removed for overhaul, and for compliance with AD 77-12-06. Since then, it had logged about 530 hours of operation. There were no requirements for mandatory propeller corrosion inspections.
Probable cause
Propeller blade separation, resulting from fatigue cracking initiated by intergranular corrosion. A factor was the lack of propeller blade corrosion inspection requirements.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA202
- Event ID
- 20001212X19629
- Case number
- NYC99LA202
- 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: 7f441d0201f049371508842e723ce20c831ac0f313698dfd5be107ec9d043e78; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:54:18.846Z.