LAX02LA187 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Bryant Field (O57) to Placerville Airport (PVF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA187
- 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 M20E
- 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
- N1285X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bryant Field (O57), Bridgeport, CATo Placerville Airport (PVF), Placerville, CA
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 6 miles from the pilot's home airport, all engine power was lost. The airplane impacted trees during its approach to a landing. A witness reported observing the airplane glide in very quietly with its propeller barely turning "as if only from the wind." The witness indicated that the airplane "skipped off the ground once, as if trying to land, and then lifted back into the air again." Thereafter, the airplane came back down and crashed into a grove of trees. The accident site was about 6 miles from the pilot's destination airport. No evidence of fuel spillage was noted on the ground around the crashed airplane. Between 10 and 15 drops of fuel were found in fuel lines. No evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions was observed during the engine examination.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which led to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA187
- Event ID
- 20020614X00889
- Case number
- LAX02LA187
- 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 2002-06-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: df2b2b7bedb4c999d515de9f9fedde967e281a34f1afd642cc76c942835203b3; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:38:46.548Z.