LAX07FA080 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF) to Borrego Valley Airport (L08)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07FA080
- 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 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
- N201RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport (MYF), San Diego, CATo Borrego Valley Airport (L08), Borrego Springs, CA
- 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 · descent
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, 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
Recorded radar data indicated that after the airplane took off for the cross-country flight across a costal mountain range, it climbed to an altitude of 7,500 feet msl on a northeasterly course toward its intended destination, which was in a large valley on the other side of the mountains. As the flight neared the destination airport and while still over mountainous terrain, the target began a gradual descent as it continued on the northeasterly heading. The last radar return was at an altitude of 4,100 feet msl. The wreckage was located on a flat mountain plateau covered with large rocks and low vegetation. The first identified point of contact with the ground were black rubber marks noted on numerous rocks about 180 feet from the main wreckage. The main wreckage was at an elevation of 4,294 feet and the ground scars and wreckage signatures were consistent with the airplane contacting the ground in a near wings level attitude. The propeller exhibited signatures consistent with significant power production from the engine. Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time. Moonrise occurred approximately 20 minutes after the accident. Weather reports from nearby aviation reporting stations depicted conditions of clear skies and visibilities equal to or greater than 10 miles over a wide area encompassing the accident site. Investigators found no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain terrain clearance during a cruise descent. Contributing to the accident were the dark night lighting conditions and the mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07FA080
- Event ID
- 20070214X00192
- Case number
- LAX07FA080
- 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 2007-02-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e78f84abd8d3973b5e2cfd980de2b7e67d8774571b8060eeb8752e378f29c754; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:52:18.871Z.