CEN13LA095 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF) to Gurdon Lowe Field (5M8)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA095
- 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
- N9493V
- Operator
- Roy Ricketts
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pine Bluff Regional Airport, Grider Field (PBF), Pine Bluff, ARTo Gurdon Lowe Field (5M8), Gurdon, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1970)
- 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 (partial)
- 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, about 30 minutes into the cross-country flight, the airplane's engine experienced a partial loss of power. The pilot stated that the airplane had departed with 35 to 40 gallons of fuel onboard, and, therefore, that sufficient fuel was remaining when the engine lost partial power. The engine subsequently lost total power when the airplane was about 1,500 feet mean sea level, and the pilot did not have time to troubleshoot the problem before having to shift his focus to identifying a suitable landing area. He completed a forced landing on a nearby road, but, during the landing roll, the left wing contacted a bush, which caused the airplane to depart the roadway and descend into an adjacent ditch. A postaccident engine examination revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The airplane's actual fuel load and distribution at the time of accident could not be determined because the airplane was recovered from the accident site before local or federal authorities were notified of the accident. Therefore, it could not be determined whether the airplane experienced fuel starvation/exhaustion during the accident flight.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because no mechanical engine malfunctions were identified and because the actual fuel load and distribution at the time of the accident could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA095
- Event ID
- 20121210X50311
- Case number
- CEN13LA095
- 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: 1394251aec1907de670cf8f0b19206e0d4185955dccf201834920286b4241be1; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:33:13.414Z.