DEN04LA105 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Escalante Municipal Airport (1L7) to Escalante Municipal Airport (1L7)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA105
- 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 M20C
- 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
- N6773U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Escalante Municipal Airport (1L7), Escalante, UTTo Escalante Municipal Airport (1L7), Escalante, UT
- 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
- Lubricating system › Exhaustion
- Lubricating system, oil quickdrain/drain plug › Not safetied
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, approximately 25 minutes into the flight, the engine began to run rough and shake "violently." A few monuments later, blue smoke came out of the engine cowling and filled the cabin. The pilot shut down the engine, and attempted a forced landing to an exposed sand bar adjacent to a river. When the airplane impacted the sand bar, the nose landing gear and both main landing gear assemblies collapsed, substantially damaging the airplane's firewall and both wings. An engine examination revealed that a brass quick-drain fitting, installed in the engine's oil pan, had unscrewed and fallen out. The quick-drain fitting was not secured with safety wire.
Probable cause
the improper installation of an oil pan quick-drain fitting resulting in the loss of engine oil, failure of the engine, and subsequent impact with terrain following an attempted forced landing. 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 DEN04LA105
- Event ID
- 20040721X01014
- Case number
- DEN04LA105
- 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 2004-07-18.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fca3f32e7ebafe721b117988eae93c1384cfbbcd6d205eef3b86d82079f7843b; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:02:34.869Z.