NYC01LA052 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR) to Michael J. Smith Field (MRH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA052
- 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
- 0 · 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
- Visual 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
- N4101H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)To Michael J. Smith Field (MRH), Beaufort, NC
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 contamination
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Fluid, fuel › Contamination, water
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Danbury, CT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sat on the ramp for about 2 1/2 weeks with the fuel tanks half filled. Outside air temperature had dipped to 18 degrees Fahrenheit the previous night, and was still below freezing about 3 hours before the accident. Temperature at the time of the accident was 43 degrees Fahrenheit. The pilot did not check the fuel for water prior to the accident flight. After a normal start, run-up, and takeoff, the engine failed at 400 to 500 feet in the air, and the pilot made a forced landing. Evidence of water was subsequently found in a container that held fuel removed from the airplane.
Probable cause
Water/ice in the fuel system and the pilot's inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA052
- Event ID
- 20001220X45462
- Case number
- NYC01LA052
- 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: 74a0089100944d75a928fe73520b78e9c94614bc0d0552a548921fa70371d4d2; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:02:13.258Z.