CEN09CA104 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From San Angelo Regional Mathis Field (KSJT) to Albuquerque International Sunport (KABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA104
- 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 M20C
- 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
- N1216X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Angelo Regional Mathis Field (KSJT), San Angelo, TXTo Albuquerque International Sunport (KABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was at a cruise altitude of 12,000 feet in instrument meteorological conditions on an instrument-flight-rules flight plan when he experienced a total loss of engine power 6 minutes after switching fuel tanks. The pilot initiated an emergency descent and broke out of the clouds at approximately 300 feet above the ground and landed in a clearing with the landing gear retracted. The airplane slid approximately 300 feet and impacted a fence. The pilot and his two passengers were not injured. The airplane sustained substantial damage. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power while at cruise altitude for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA104
- Event ID
- 20081228X50523
- Case number
- CEN09CA104
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 4908cd5fc9b8c3a33cad5dfbbd4117c5443cfc69c567b0945b47ba6f685ea7c0; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:38:20.334Z.