NYC06LA101 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD) to Solberg/Hunterdon Airport (N51)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06LA101
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20J
- 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
- N201BD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Norwood Memorial Airport (OWD), Norwood, MATo Solberg/Hunterdon Airport (N51), Readington, NJ
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The Mooney M20J accelerated and lifted off normally from the runway; however, during the initial climb after takeoff, it experienced a significant loss of engine power. The pilot performed a forced landing to a golf course adjacent to the airport. The airplane came to rest upright; however, the engine was torn away from the firewall, and the airframe was substantially damaged. Examination of the engine revealed that the Bendix single drive, dual magneto mounting flange was fatigue fractured, consistent with inadequate torque on the mounting nuts. The airplane had been operated for about 275 hours since its most recent annual inspection, which was performed about a year prior to the accident. The logbook entry for the annual inspection specifically included maintenance performed on the magneto.
Probable cause
Improper maintenance, which resulted in a fatigue fracture of the dual magneto mounting flange, and a subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06LA101
- Event ID
- 20060426X00488
- Case number
- NYC06LA101
- 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: ab34324c5f120ca79031ef5a4b085eb2055fd880493ce684c1b751f228526e1c; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:47:41.244Z.