WPR14FA012 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Palm Springs International Airport (KPSP) to Gillespie Field (KSEE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14FA012
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Unknown
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
- N7145U
- Operator
- Thulin Andrew W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Springs International Airport (KPSP), Palm Springs, CATo Gillespie Field (KSEE), El Cajon, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1964)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a 65-mile cross-country personal flight over mountainous terrain with a planned destination of his home base. The pilot contacted air traffic control (ATC) for visual flight rules (VFR) flight following. During the course of the flight, the pilot experienced turbulence at 8,500 ft and descended to 4,500 ft. When an ATC controller informed him that he was in an area of high terrain, the pilot stated that he was familiar with the area and could maintain his own terrain obstruction clearance. Several minutes later, radio and radar contact were lost, and an alert notice was issued several hours later. Sheriff's helicopters attempted to search the area but had to abandon their efforts due to inclement weather. The following morning, the airplane was located on the side of a mountain with a 50-percent grade at an elevation of 4,200 ft and near the last radar contact.
Postaccident examination of the recovered airframe and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation. Weather reports for the area indicated that the mountainous terrain was most likely partially obscured by clouds; therefore, it is likely that the pilot was maneuvering to maintain VFR flight when the airplane collided with the mountainous terrain.
The sedating antihistamine diphenhydramine was found in cardiac blood. However, diphenhydramine undergoes significant postmortem redistribution. At the level detected, the investigation was unable to determine if the medication would have impaired the pilot around the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain clearance from terrain while maneuvering to avoid clouds in mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14FA012
- Event ID
- 20131010X04640
- Case number
- WPR14FA012
- 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: 1dd3e129d4183d46848e152269fce3a827c18fcd1811c0b8c71407db96dbb9b3; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:05:04.890Z.