CHI01LA088 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Portland Municipal Airport (1M5) to Oakland County International Airport (PTK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA088
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 M20K
- 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
- N1157P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Municipal Airport (1M5), Portland, TNTo Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MI
- 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
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane contacted the terrain during a forced landing on a frozen lake following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported he departed Cincinnati, Ohio at 1330 for the one hour flight to Portland, Tennessee. He then departed Portland, Tennessee, at 1445 en route to Pontiac, Michigan. The pilot estimated having 80 gallons of fuel on board at the time of departure "…based upon visual inspection and my tank and dashboard gauges." The pilot reported he was level at 4,500 feet, 20 miles south of Pontiac, when there was a change in engine sound. He reported, "The pitch varied for about 3 seconds and then my TIT went to the top. I immediately richened the mixture. The gas gauges showed 1/3 on each tank. I had been alternating the tanks to keep them even during flight. Another 5 seconds passed and then the plane lost all power. I immediately switched from the left to the right tank. I hit the boost pump and after 2 seconds I got a 2 second burst of power which could not be replicated despite numerous efforts to do so." The pilot attempted to divert to the nearest airport but was unable to reach it. A forced landing was made on a frozen lake where the airplane slid across the lake coming to rest after contacting steep bank of the far shoreline. Post accident inspection of the airplane revealed one quart of fuel remained in the right fuel tank and between 6 and 6 1/2 gallons of fuel were in the left tank. There was no evidence of fuel leakage on the frozen lake either during the accident or removal of the airplane. The airplane was equipped with the Rocket STC SA5691NM, for installation of the Continental TSIO-520-NB engine and a McCauley 3-blade propeller.
Probable cause
Inadequate preflight planning/preparation which resulted in an adequate fuel supply for the flight and subsequently in fuel starvation. A factor associated with the accident was the steep bank which the airplane contacted during the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA088
- Event ID
- 20010213X00441
- Case number
- CHI01LA088
- 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: 6f72b0feb3cca1ff5ae07e5ac2d660957b9c45f8da5477016b31d693f8127c58; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:10:17.838Z.