MIA00FA066 · Mooney M20M
Mooney M20M · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR) to 8S5
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00FA066
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20M
- 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
- N2135X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR), Myrtle Beach, SCTo 8S5
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was cleared for a night instrument approach in instrument conditions. A witness who was waiting for the pilot at the airport heard the airplane fly over the airport flying towards a residential area, but could not see the airplane due to fog. Witnesses in the residential area observed the airplane descend out of the fog, pull up about 40-degrees, and reenter the fog in a steep left bank with slow airspeed. The airplane was observed descending out of the fog in a 70-degree left bank. An increase in engine power was heard, the airplane disappeared from view and was heard to impact water and a marshy area. Examination of the airframe, flight controls, engine assembly and accessories revealed no evidence of a precrash mechanical failure or malfunction. Toxicology results revealed the pilot was impaired due to drugs.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed (VSO) while maneuv ering on a night instrument approach in instrument conditions. This resulted in an inadvertent in-flight loss of control (stall/spin), and subsequent in-flight collision with a swamp. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's impairment due to marihuana.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00FA066
- Event ID
- 20001212X20404
- Case number
- MIA00FA066
- 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 2000-01-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 43750fbb41ab8f25d8ad597cbd76ab0325ad9e960e0a422fd990852bc3849e4f; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:30:51.416Z.