SEA01LA066 · Mooney M20A
Mooney M20A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Tracy Municipal Airport (TCY) to Portland Troutdale Airport (TTD)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA066
- 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 M20A
- 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
- N8346E
- Operator
- Martin, Glenn H. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tracy Municipal Airport (TCY), Tracy, CATo Portland Troutdale Airport (TTD), Troutdale, OR
- 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 · descent
- 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 exhaustion; Tree(s)
- 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 › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed Tracy, California, on a nonstop delivery flight to the new owner of the recently sold 1959 Mooney M20A. Approximately three hours and 19 minutes later (more than 470 nautical miles of flight), descending toward his destination of Troutdale, Oregon, the engine stopped. The pilot executed an emergency landing to a golf course approximately 2.5 nautical miles south of his destination airport and the aircraft impacted trees during the forced landing to a golf course. The pilot fueled before departing and believed both wing tanks were full (17.5 gallon capacity each) and that the "...auxiliary tank sounded full...." A police officer from the Gresham Police Department interviewed the pilot immediately following the accident and reported to an FAA inspector that the pilot stated that he "...couldn't understand how he could have run out of gas but when the engine quit he switched tanks and tried everything he could but the engine wouldn't start. All his fuel gauges read empty...." The FAA inspector found six ounces of fuel in each wing tank and less than one gallon in the auxiliary tank (14 gallon capacity).
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate decision in which he failed to refuel while en route, resulting in fuel exhaustion and loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA066
- Event ID
- 20010323X00646
- Case number
- SEA01LA066
- 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: 9f57fb4eca77f8750626754531c478633b3f1a8aa014489ac1145ea62fc3f455; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:11:05.443Z.