CHI07LA287 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From De Kalb County Airport (KGWB) to Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport (KUMP)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07LA287
- 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 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
- N231BQ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From De Kalb County Airport (KGWB), Auburn, INTo Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport (KUMP), Fishers, IN
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod bolt › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane had just leveled off at 6500 feet, after departure, when the engine vibrated and lost full power. During an attempted return to the departure airport, the pilot realized that he could not make any runway and chose to make a forced landing into a corn field. The airplane was substantially damaged during the forced landing. Postaccident disassembly of the engine disclosed that the number two connecting rod had separated from the crankshaft; one of the connecting rod bolts had sheared. Inspection of the fracture surface of this connecting rod bolt disclosed there were signature marks of metal fatigue across the bolt shear face that had initiated at the surface of the bolt. The number two cylinder had been replaced about 8 hours prior to the accident; however, the connecting rod had not been removed from the crankshaft during the cylinder replacement.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the fatigue failure of one of the number two cylinder connecting rod bolts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07LA287
- Event ID
- 20071011X01540
- Case number
- CHI07LA287
- 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: f6553f044b4428f34176b15b2bb98a987ac294ddf903760c30e6298e66f12ba0; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:28:31.603Z.