LAX99FA294 · Mooney M20D
Mooney M20D · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO) to Fallon Municipal Airport (FLX)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99FA294
- 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 M20D
- 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
- N6831U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CATo Fallon Municipal Airport (FLX), Fallon, NV
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About noon, during a cross-country flight under benign visual meteorological conditions, the pilot lost control of her airplane. It entered an uncontrolled descent and impacted 9,200-foot mean sea level terrain in a nearly vertical nose down attitude. The wreckage was not located for several days. The pilot had about 1,700 total hours of flight time, of which about 1,600 hours were in the accident model of airplane. She was a current pilot. The airplane was not equipped with an autopilot or any wing-leveling device. There were no en route communications between the pilot and any FAA facility. No evidence of any mechanical malfunction with the airframe or engine was noted during the on-scene wreckage examination. The continuity of the airplane's flight control system was confirmed. Three witnesses who observed the pilot prior to departure indicated that she did not appear physically well. One of the witnesses stated the pilot had a 'flushed' look on her face and bags under her eyes. The second witness reported that the pilot 'did not look normal.' The third witness stated that the pilot 'did not look well.' The toxicological examination revealed the presence of a readily available over-the-counter decongestant in body tissue; however, no blood level for the drug was ascertained. The drug's involvement remains undetermined.
Probable cause
The pilot's in-flight loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99FA294
- Event ID
- 20001212X19788
- Case number
- LAX99FA294
- 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: 3c8fe0f19c2e846cd87f88c417bedcc217f320f4630686b056e3c361681ee428; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:49:49.107Z.