ERA12LA532 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO) to Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA532
- 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 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
- N557M
- Operator
- Bochter Steven R
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO), East Hampton, NYTo Taunton Municipal King Field (TAN), Taunton, MA
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
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 reported that after takeoff, he retracted the landing gear and flaps and that the engine rpm decreased from 2,750 rpm to 2,400 rpm. He verified that the carburetor heat was off and that the throttle, propeller, and mixture controls were full forward. He declared an emergency with the control tower controller and turned left in an attempt to land on a closed runway. During the turn, "the engine became quiet," and the airplane collided with trees.
Postaccident examination of the airplane and engine showed no evidence of precrash mechanical failure or malfunction. Review of the FAA carburetor icing probability chart showed that conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to light carburetor icing at cruise and glide power; however, the airplane was operating at a higher power setting. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA532
- Event ID
- 20120827X42606
- Case number
- ERA12LA532
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 49023b71b7f4ddd587f32e75bb9880d1ae009a65c5e5dab661d50bda68ec9bfe; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:31:24.820Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Misspelled city name; TAN is Taunton Municipal Airport, Taunton, MA.