CEN14FA102 · Mooney M20R
Mooney M20R · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Boyne City Municipal Airport (N98) to Oakland Troy Airport (VLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14FA102
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20R
- 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
- N1046L
- Operator
- Todd G. Lloyd · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Boyne City Municipal Airport (N98), Boyne City, MITo Oakland Troy Airport (VLL), Troy, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2001)
- 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 · climb to 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instrument-rated pilot received weather data via a computerized flight planning service on the morning of the accident. The briefing included a synopsis for upper Michigan that indicated overcast conditions at 3,000 feet with cloud tops at 12,000 feet, visibility of 3 to 5 miles with light snow showers and mist, and wind from the northwest gusting to 25 knots. An airmen's meteorological information was current for instrument flight rules conditions with ceilings below 1,000 feet and visibility below 3 miles with precipitation, mist, and blowing snow at the time of the accident. Several witnesses reported hearing the airplane heading west, which was in the direction of the departure airport. Another witness stated that, due to the snow, he could only see the airplane's lights but that it appeared that the airplane banked "hard," pitched up and down, and accelerated as it descended. The airplane impacted terrain about 1 mile east of the airport in a heavily wooded valley. The airplane was substantially damaged from impact and a postimpact fire. One witness reported whiteout conditions and several witnesses reported that it was snowing heavily at the time of the accident. Dark light and gusting wind conditions were also present at the time of the accident. An examination of the airplane and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have prevented normal operation. The pilot was likely trying to return to the airport after encountering dark night conditions and heavy snow showers and subsequently lost control of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane as he attempted to return to the airport after encountering dark night conditions and heavy snow showers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14FA102
- Event ID
- 20140106X13945
- Case number
- CEN14FA102
- 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. 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: ec5df98ca78c896f0b85fbddeb315daab49aebbde4b1d81e093c61d6cb8bccab; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:09:25.240Z.