FTW85FA088 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From an unrecorded airport to T02 · LAPORTE, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW85FA088
- 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
- 4 · 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 M20J
- 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
- N5681K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo T02 · LAPORTE, 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 · 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 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
- Pilot in command › IFR procedure, not followed
- Pilot in command › Overconfidence in personal ability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE NON-INSTRUMENT RATED PLT OBTAINED A WX BRIEFING & FILED AN IFR FLT PLAN ALTHOUGH POOR WX CONDITIONS EXISTED (200 FT CEILING & ONE-HALF MI VISIBILITY) AT SAN ANTONIO. THE TOWER INSTRUCTIONS TO N5681K WERE TO FLY RWY HEADING (120 DEG) AFTER DEPARTURE, HOWEVER, WHEN THE ACFT MADE A LEFT TURN AFTER TAKEOFF, THE ACFT WAS INSTRUCTED TO TURN RT TO A HEADING OF 180 DEG. THE PLT ACKNOWLEDGED THE HEADING CHANGE BUT DID NOT COMPLY WITH THE INSTRUCTIONS. THIS WAS THE LAST CONTACT WITH THE PLT. DURING THE INVESTIGATION A COMPUTER-GENERATED GROUND TRACK REVEALED A LEFT TURN OF 495 DEG, FOLLOWED BY RT TURN OF 45 DEG WHICH WAS HELD FOR ABOUT ONE-HALF MIN & THEN ANOTHER RT TURN OF ABOUT 50 DEG BEFORE DISAPPEARING FROM RADAR.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW85FA088
- Event ID
- 20001214X41780
- Case number
- FTW85FA088
- 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: cf7775310fa8258480bfad3c4a6d3eddedb11ad69a6a563c0561eab41b14363d; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:11:47.865Z.