ATL89FA131 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR) to Florence Regional Airport (FLO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL89FA131
- 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 M20F
- 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
- N9252V
- Operator
- Charles W. Foley · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR), Aurora, ILTo Florence Regional Airport (FLO), Florence, SC
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
AT 1507 CDT ON 4/15/89, THE ACFT DEPD AURORA, IL, ON A FLT TO FLORENCE, SC. WHEN IT DID NOT ARRIVE, A SEARCH WAS INITIATED. FIVE DAYS LATER, IT WAS FOUND BY SURVEYORS ON LYNCH MTN AT ABOUT THE 3500' LEVEL. IMPACT OCCURRED ON A WOODED HILLSIDE, PARALLEL TO A RIDGELINE. THERE WAS EVIDENCE THAT THE ACFT WAS IN LEVEL FLT WHEN IT CRASHED. WITNESSES IN THE AREA RPRTD THEY HAD HEARD THE SOUND OF AN ACFT ENG AT ABOUT 1900 EDT ON 4/15/89. FOG, ACCOMPANIED BY DRIZZLE, COVERED THE TOP OF THE MTN AT THAT TIME. AN INVESTIGATION REVEALED THE PLT HAD OBTAINED 4 WX BRIEFINGS BEFORE THE FLT. EACH TIME, HE WAS ADZD THAT VFR FLT WAS NOT RECOMMENDED.
Probable cause
CONTINUED VFR FLIGHT BY THE PILOT INTO INSTRUMENT METEOROLOGICAL CONDITIONS (IMC). FACTORS RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WERE: THE ADVERSE WEATHER CONDITIONS, TERRAIN, AND THE PILOT'S LACK OF INSTRUMENT EXPERIENCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL89FA131
- Event ID
- 20001213X28023
- Case number
- ATL89FA131
- 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: 638cc7d6fe519e3ca8c9debbd17be026f1e856fbcfedadd89f8003e2dddfec09; retrieved 2026-09-21T03:20:47.588Z.