NYC07LA157 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE) to Fairfield County Airport (FDW)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07LA157
- 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 M20E
- 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
- N7837V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE), Columbia, SCTo Fairfield County Airport (FDW), Winnsboro, SC
- 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
- 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
- Fuel system, injector › Contamination
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A certified flight instructor (CFI) was flying with a commercial pilot who was receiving dual flight instruction towards a flight instructor certificate. After practicing a simulated engine failure, the airplane was in cruise flight at an altitude of 2,200 feet msl, when the engine rpm suddenly dropped to 800 rpm. The CFI was not able to restore engine power, and performed a forced landing to a field. During the landing, the airplane's left wing struck a tree stump and was substantially damaged. During a post-accident test run, the engine ran rough, with intermittent surges. After the fuel injector servo was removed and a replacement installed, the engine ran smoothly through 2,500 rpm. Subsequent examination of the fuel injector servo revealed that the fuel inlet screen had more than 50 percent of its exterior surface covered in light brown corrosion/contamination, and two-thirds of the inlet fitting was blocked by debris. In addition, contamination was noted throughout the fuel servo. The airplane had been operated for about 5 hours since its most recent annual inspection, which was performed about 3 months prior to the accident. The airplane manufacture's annual inspection guidelines included inspecting the fuel injection system, and cleaning the screens per the engine manufacturer's recommendations.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to contamination within the fuel injector servo, which was not detected during a recent inadequate annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07LA157
- Event ID
- 20070713X00934
- Case number
- NYC07LA157
- 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: 5094e350e5d52769cb027869550ce635591cdfdfa7062fbb61d1fa99bdc1e001; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:41:33.567Z.