ATL05LA051 · Mooney 20P
Mooney 20P · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) on approach
From Pryor Field Regional Airport (DCU) to Columbus Airport (CSG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05LA051
- 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
- 0
- 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 20P
- 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
- N321DT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pryor Field Regional Airport (DCU), Decator, ALTo Columbus Airport (CSG), Columbus, GA
- 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
- Approach
- 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)
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Undertorqued
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on an instrument flight the engine stopped and oil covered the windshield. The pilot declared an emergency and the air traffic controller attempted unsuccessfully to vector the flight to a nearby grass airstrip. The pilot selected an off-airport location for an emergency landing. The airplane collided with a tree while the pilot was maneuvering for the emergency landing. Post-accident examination of the engine revealed that the #2 cylinder assembly had separated from the crankcase. The #2 cylinder was recovered and exhibited fretting on the mating surface of the base flange. Post-accident examination revealed that the torque on the adjacent cylinder hold down nuts were less than what was prescribed for installation. A review of the engine maintenance records revealed that on 12/18/2002, the #1 cylinder assembly was replaced. The cylinder was overhauled by Aviation Engines and installed by North Alabama Aviation. At the time of the accident the engine had accumulated 85.6 hours since the #1 cylinder assembly had been replaced.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel failure to properly torque the cylinder head during installation that resulted in the separation from the engine assembly and the subsequent loss of power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05LA051
- Event ID
- 20050222X00217
- Case number
- ATL05LA051
- 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: b747af05a91c1649b37bc8b7ace0ebae9464ea97b0a609932f2692c9782daf53; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:09:53.325Z.