MIA02LA020 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Shelby County Airport (EET) to Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA02LA020
- 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 M20C
- 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
- N6753U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shelby County Airport (EET), Alabaster, ALTo Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FL
- 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 exhaustion
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, improper
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the aircraft was in cruise flight at an altitude of 7,000 feet, when all of a sudden the engine ceased operating. He further stated that he then engaged the fuel boost pump, and switched to the left fuel tank, and engine power was restored, but about 10 seconds after power had been restored, the engine ceased operating again. He said he again switched tanks, but the engine failed to operate a second time, and he ended up making a forced landing to a field. The pilot later stated to the NTSB that the reason the engine ceased operating was due to fuel exhaustion. According to the pilot, his wife, a passenger on the flight, had ordered fuel at Shelby County Airport in Alabaster, Alabama, prior to them departing on the flight, but the fuel had not been provided. In addition, an employee at the Shelby County Airport stated that fuel had been ordered for N6753U, but the linesman had forgotten the order, and that no fuel had been placed in the accident aircraft's fuel tanks, as was requested. An FAA Inspector who conducted a postaccident examination of the aircraft, said that during his investigation of the accident aircraft, he found no breaches to fuel system, and that all aircraft fuel tanks were "bone dry."
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight planning/preparation and failure to ensure sufficient fuel was available to complete the flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion, a forced landing, and damage to the aircraft when it collided with a fence during the landing rollout.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA02LA020
- Event ID
- 20011123X02287
- Case number
- MIA02LA020
- 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: ae0834ea633eec24dfadd7a0cc048b1804d22b31fab9d92929a168645d7207f2; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:21:39.941Z.