NYC00FA210 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB) to Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWM)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00FA210
- 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 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
- N5727Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WVTo Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWM), Lawrence, MA
- 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 engine power
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lunenburg, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot contacted a Flight Service Station at 1404, and requested weather information for a flight from Parkersburg, West Virginia to Lawrence, Massachusetts. The pilot was advised of low ceilings and reduced visibility near his destination. The pilot then told the weather briefer that he might have to divert around the weather. The pilot "topped off" the fuel tanks and departed PKB. Witnesses near the accident site heard a low flying airplane, followed by the sound of an impact. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions, and no fuel was found in the fuel tanks. A trip sheet and IFR Low Enroute charts were found in the wreckage, and were consistent with an IFR flight from PKB to LWM. However, a flight plan was not filed, and no approach plates were recovered. Additionally, the airplane manufacturer stated that at a power setting of 2,500 rpm, at 7,500 feet, the airplane's endurance was 4 hours and 26 minutes. The accident flight lasted approximately 4 hours and 30 minutes.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning which resulted in exhaustion of the fuel supply.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00FA210
- Event ID
- 20001212X21563
- Case number
- NYC00FA210
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: b38dbcc65a61a4a718ab0aff5a68f95fd9d1fa7b1248995519d8b594a7ee24ee; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:00:13.103Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. The narrative states the pilot requested weather "for a flight from Parkersburg, West Virginia to Lawrence, Massachusetts" and that the trip sheet and charts "were consistent with an IFR flight from PKB to LWM"; nothing in it mentions Concord.