SEA00FA039 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Eastern Oregon Regional Airport at Pendleton (PDT) to Eugene Airport (EUG)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00FA039
- 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
- 2 · 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 M20K
- 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
- N251BD
- Operator
- Heine, Doug L. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eastern Oregon Regional Airport at Pendleton (PDT), PENDELTON, ORTo Eugene Airport (EUG), Eugene, OR
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Pilot in command › Ice/frost removal from aircraft, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After landing to refuel, the pilot made an inadequate effort to remove airframe ice and snow, which had accumulated while on the ground before departing for his final destination. A witness (refueler) observed that about a half inch of somewhat moist snow had accumulated on the wings of the airplane prior to the time he fueled the airplane, necessitating brushing snow away from the fuel caps. The witness (refueler) stated that after wiping the snow off, there was still a covering of rough ice on the upper surface of the wing. During the fueling, he noticed that none of the ice on the wing had melted (ambient temperature at the time of the accident was minus 1 degree Celsius). The witness (refueler) also reported that after refueling the airplane, he looked at the right wing leading edge and pointed out some rough ice behind the area that the pilot had cleared, both on top and bottom of the wing. The pilot had rubbed his hand over the rough area, commenting that there wasn't enough ice to make any difference, before attempting his takeoff. The airplane crashed within two miles of the airport. The pilot's last radio communication received was that he was 'going down.' Post-crash examination of the engine revealed no evidence of pre-impact malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately remove ice and snow from the airplane. A contributing factor was the pilot's inability to maintain control during climb due to degradation of the airplane's aerodynamic performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00FA039
- Event ID
- 20001212X20431
- Case number
- SEA00FA039
- 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 2000-01-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f7fe93b3b8cc86da4e5b687655befabf6b6c01db778f43937d9b7f95aab5d327; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:29:05.096Z.