NYC07CA080 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Wilmington Airport (ILG) to Wilmington Airport (ILG)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07CA080
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
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
- N3278F
- Operator
- Joseph M. Glatts · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wilmington Airport (ILG), New Castle, DETo Wilmington Airport (ILG), New Castle, DE
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, 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 pilot of the Mooney M20F departed on a local flight. Approximately 30 to 35 minutes after takeoff, the airplane's engine began to sputter, which was followed by a total loss of power. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the firewall and airframe during an ensuing forced landing to a field. Examination of the airplane revealed that both fuel tanks were intact, however, they contained no fuel. The pilot stated that he did not experience any mechanical problems with the airplane and attributed the loss of engine power to fuel exhaustion. He reported 2,065 hours of total flight experience, which included approximately 292 hours in the same make and model as the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight planning, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, and subsequent forced landing to a field.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07CA080
- Event ID
- 20070407X00377
- Case number
- NYC07CA080
- 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: fe12318d2c52a0d855ba4300058b175c6bb68a13ffec79116c0993c048580f63; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:00:51.721Z.