IAD03LA025 · Mooney 20J
Mooney 20J · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03LA025
- 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 20J
- Aircraft type
- Mooney 20
- 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
- N1074Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU), Morristown, NJTo not recorded
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Fuel system › Ice
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after departure, at an altitude of about 700 feet, the airplane's engine sputtered, then lost power. The pilot initiated a right turn back toward the airport, and attempted a forced landing to a taxiway. During the landing, the airplane's left main landing gear collapsed and the left wing hit the ground. Examination of the airplane's fuel tanks shortly after the accident revealed they were full; however, only a trace of fuel was observed in the fuel filter bowl. The fuel tanks were sumped, and fuel flow was observed to be lower than normal, although no water or ice was observed. After the airplane was thawed in a hangar overnight, fuel flow increased. When the engine was subsequently test run on the airframe, it started without hesitation and ran continuously at various power settings. The airplane had been parked outside during the night prior to the accident flight. The low temperature that night was 28 degrees Fahrenheit, and the dewpoint was 28 degrees Fahrenheit. In addition, light snow and mist were reported throughout the night. According to the pilot, he cleared a significant amount of ice from the airplane during the preflight inspection. Temperature at the time of the accident was 34 degrees Fahrenheit.
Probable cause
Ice in the fuel system, which resulted in restricted fuel flow and a subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03LA025
- Event ID
- 20030114X00065
- Case number
- IAD03LA025
- 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: f924ca40c3da0c35f0526a67862fd9eb7e87fffcd80a99f52916408382ea8923; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:42:47.815Z.