NYC00LA069 · Mooney M20M
Mooney M20M · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV) to Essex County Airport (CDW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA069
- 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 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
- N223KT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV)To Essex County Airport (CDW), Caldwell, NJ
- 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
- 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
- Maintenance › Improper
- Miscellaneous, engine › Blocked(total)
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Montpelier, VT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
A few minutes after takeoff, the pilot realized the engine was not developing full manifold pressure; shortly thereafter, the engine lost all oil pressure. When the engine began to vibrate, the pilot shut down the engine and performed a forced landing to a field. Examination of the airplane revealed the engine's cowling was covered with oil, and the engine's crankshaft seal had been 'blown outward.' Ice was observed in the engine crankcase breather line. Additionally, a 'bend' was found in the breather line near a clamp that was installed over the breather line vent hole. There were no other discrepancies found with airplane. The outside air temperature reported at the airport about the time of the accident was 0 degrees F. The airplane was last flown 1 week prior to the accident. The airplane was kept in an unheated hanger; however, the engine was preheated using a built-in engine heater to an oil temperature of 40 degrees F, just prior to engine start.
Probable cause
A blocked crankcase breather line due to ice and improper maintenance which resulted in further restricting the line. A factor in this accident was the below freezing outside air temperature.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA069
- Event ID
- 20001212X20427
- Case number
- NYC00LA069
- 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: 8b48e7765a63a79223e891f3d23fe6687ad3a58ff6f6f75b16525d168c9c23b5; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:21:30.245Z.