DEN85FA097 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN85FA097
- 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 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
- N7414V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harry Reid International Airport (LAS), Las Vegas, NVTo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TX
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft handling, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Wing › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING PREFLT & INFLT WX BRIEFINGS, THE PLT WAS ADVISED THAT MOUNTAINS ALONG HIS ROUTE WERE OBSCURED BY CLOUDS & PRECIP.ALSO, HE WAS CAUTIONED ABOUT MODERATE ICING IN CLOUDS & PRECIP AT OR ABOVE THE FREEZING LVL. WHILE EN ROUTE, THE PLT OBTAINED CLEARANCE TO DETOUR AROUND CLOUDS. HE THEN REQUESTED A DESCENT TO GET OUT OF CLOUDS BECAUSE THE ACFT WAS PICKING UP RAIN & LIGHT ICE. HE WAS CLEARED TO DESCEND TO THE MIN EN ROUTE ALT (MEA) OF 9000 FT. A SHORT TIME LATER, RADAR & RADIO CONTACT WERE LOST. LATER, THE ACFT WAS FND WHERE IT IMPACTED THE SLOPE OF A HILL ON OPEN DESERT TERRAIN WHILE IN A STEEP, NOSE DOWN, RIGHT WING LOW, ATTITUDE. IMPACT OCCURRED AT HIGH SPEED ON A NORTHERLY HEADING. THERE WERE NO KNOWN WITNESSES. NO PREIMPACT PART FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION WAS FOUND. ACCORDING TO MAINTENANCE RECORDS, THE LAST PITOT-STATIC SYS, SENSITIVE ALTIMETER & TRANSPONDER CHECKS WERE PERFORMED ON 6/3/83, & THE LAST VOR CHECK WAS ON 1/6/78.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN85FA097
- Event ID
- 20001214X35882
- Case number
- DEN85FA097
- 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: dfb97ae9925e57d00f738bd52863ebc14f8669d3737ee369b6733b65fbe6fff7; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:06:36.607Z.