DEN03LA024 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) during initial climb
From Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE) to Waco Regional Airport (ACT)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA024
- 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
- N252DR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eagle County Regional Airport (EGE), Eagle, COTo Waco Regional Airport (ACT), Waco, TX
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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)
- 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 › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Aircraft protective covering, not removed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After the airplane lifted off the runway and climbed 50 feet (about 10 seconds into the flight), the engine lost power. The pilot attempted to land on the 2,000 feet of runway remaining. The pilot said there was insufficient runway to bring the airplane to a safe stop, so he elected to abort the landing. The airplane did not become airborne, but traveled approximately 300 feet before exiting the runway onto soft, muddy ground. The nose wheel collapsed and was torn off, wrinkling the fuselage behind the firewall. There was a 4-inch hole in the fuselage, and the horizontal stabilizer was also damaged. Airport emergency personnel who responded reported finding the protective coverings for the engine air scoops still in place.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to remove protective coverings from the engine air scoops during the preflight inspection, resulting in air starvation and a loss of engine power shortly after takeoff. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA024
- Event ID
- 20021213X05604
- Case number
- DEN03LA024
- 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, coordinates. 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: 785a5f38b96722cdb704ac5d88df8cfc8efbb35b7568ffe558020b59d019bc20; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:49:17.457Z.