ATL04FA061 · Mooney 20F
Mooney 20F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Petersburg Airport (OH29) to Suwannee County Airport (24J)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04FA061
- 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 20F
- 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
- N2996L
- Operator
- Floyd C. Redmond · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Petersburg Airport (OH29), Petersburg, OHTo Suwannee County Airport (24J), Live Oak, FL
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 starvation; Stall; Tree(s)
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot obtained fuel before departing on the cross country flight. Two witnesses on the ground heard and observed the airplane approaching their location. The airplane was about 100 to 200 feet above the trees. One witnesses stated the airplanes engine was heard to increase in power, decrease in power, and increase in power again. The other witnesses stated the engine was making a popping sound, while the engine was cutting in and out. The airplane was observed to make a steep right turn and the right wing was perpendicular to the ground. The nose of the airplane pitched down and the airplane disappeared from view. The Flight Manual states the airplane will stall at 98 MPH without extended flaps at a 60-degree bank angle. Examination of the crash site revealed the right main fuel cap tab was secured. The left main fuel cap tab was in the open position. Examination of the airframe and engine assembly revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering for an emergency landing resulting in an inadvertent stall and a collision with trees and the ground during an uncontrolled descent. A factor in the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight resulting in a loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04FA061
- Event ID
- 20040105X00010
- Case number
- ATL04FA061
- 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: 4d18561697782dca7c4c5117a6f3c46d9366b310870bd8ed34048f0bc3c918f9; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:40:17.072Z.