DEN02FA030 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From McElroy Airfield (20V) to Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN02FA030
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N1323D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McElroy Airfield (20V), Kremmling, COTo Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, CO
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After visiting his girlfriend, the non-instrument rated private pilot took off in dark night visual meteorological conditions to return home. When he failed to arrive, a search was initiated and the wreckage was found 2 days later in deep snow in mountainous terrain. According to recorded radar data at two different sites, a target departed the airport and climbed to 13,900 feet msl and took up a direct heading toward what would have been the pilot's planned destination. Halfway there, the target made a wide circle to the left of approximately 450 degrees, followed immediately by a tight circle to the right of approximately 360 degrees. The difference in time and altitude between the last two radar "hits" 14 seconds and 3,000 feet, respectively, equates to a 12,857 foot per minute rate of descent.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control due to spatial disorientation, resulting in a collision with terrain. Contributing factors were the pilot's lack of an instrument rating and the dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN02FA030
- Event ID
- 20020321X00377
- Case number
- DEN02FA030
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-03-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f888887a6c6f13f3c35deb495a2864bf53ef249d1c3826d13cfc5d42281b9ca5; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:08:56.181Z.