IAD03LA073 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN) to Blue Ridge Airport (MTV)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03LA073
- 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
- N231PG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN), Easton, MDTo Blue Ridge Airport (MTV), Martinsville, VA
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A 652-hour commercial pilot reported a loss of engine power during cruise flight. During a forced landing on a four-lane highway, the airplane collided with a vehicle. Examination of the engine revealed that the #2 cylinder head was fractured circumferentially between that fourth and fifth fins from the engine end of the head due to fatigue. As a result, the head was in two pieces: the engine side and the dome side. The engine side of the head remained attached to the barrel and the injector line was fractured at one of the brazed joint for one of the ferrules. The 215-horsepower engine had accumulated a total 326-hours since the last top overhaul and 887 hours since its last major overhaul.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to the fatigue fracture of the #2 cylinder head. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03LA073
- Event ID
- 20031125X01948
- Case number
- IAD03LA073
- 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: 62a4530f8fc5d696bf089d0594e60b7285d96788cfef26db40df095fe60b320a; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:38:25.980Z.