DFW05LA033 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Fort Stockton Pecos County Airport (FST) to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05LA033
- 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
- Not recorded
Mooney M20F
- 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
- N3208F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Stockton Pecos County Airport (FST), Fort Stockton, TXTo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, 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
- 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
- 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, connecting rod › Failure
- Fluid, oil › Starvation/exhaustion
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 600-hour private pilot reported that he began "having engine difficulties." The pilot noticed, "the #2 cylinder head temperature gauge was indicating a lower than normal temperature, and shortly thereafter, there was a loss of engine oil pressure." The pilot then determined that there were no available airport landing sites, and few minutes later, the engine stopped. He prepared to execute an off-airfield emergency landing. He determined that the safest place to land was the westbound lane of an interstate highway below him. During the landing flare, the right wing of the airplane collided with the rear of a large semi-tractor truck that was traveling on the highway. The airplane then flipped over and came to rest inverted. A certificated airframe and powerplant mechanic examined the engine under the supervision of the FAA inspector. The examination revealed that the connecting rod to the # 2 piston was broken. The piston was seized inside of the cylinder and could not be removed. No rod bolts or hardware were found. There was damage to the engine case between the #2 and #4 cylinders. The spark plugs were removed and inspected, and no anomalies were found. The oil filter and oil screen were removed, and metal flakes were observed. Oil was not observed on the dipstick or anywhere in the engine, nor did it appear on the exterior surface of the airplane.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of the failure of a connecting rod due to oil starvation/exhaustion. 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 DFW05LA033
- Event ID
- 20041227X02034
- Case number
- DFW05LA033
- 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: 88d2f56225d9f7b417cd6c3c9415e14fe6f8bf7d3bbb41786b39ebf9b2f50437; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:26:43.801Z.