SEA06FA038 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO) to Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06FA038
- 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 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
- N27ER
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO), Hillsboro, ORTo Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO)
- 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 · IFR final 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 (non-mechanical)
- 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 exhaustion; Stall/spin
- 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, not maintained
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 was flying a visual flight rules (VFR) practice ILS approach at approximately 4 nm from the runway, when he reported to air traffic control (ATC) a loss of engine power. In his last transmission, the pilot said he had a turf airstrip underneath him. A witness, who was a certified pilot said the airplane went into a steep right turn with a 30 to 40 degree nose low attitude. He said it looked like a spin entry. Several residents at the private residential airpark heard a loud noise and found the downed aircraft. They reported not smelling any fuel fumes at the accident scene and there was no postimpact fire. The aircraft had been airborne for approximately 45 minutes. Aerial photographs indicated that the private airstrip was bordered on two sides by two 180 acre plots of open crop land, with no obstacles.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering for a forced landing, resulting in a stall-spin and uncontrolled descent to ground impact. A contributing factor was the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion resulting from the pilot's inadequate preflight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06FA038
- Event ID
- 20060112X00062
- Case number
- SEA06FA038
- 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: 127b3c5a4a269c3775dfff58b501151cd9bbdb391632f2c47d7d8666eb1488c2; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:37:19.634Z.