ERA15FA049 · Mooney M20C
Stoneman Excavating Mooney M20C · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Greenbrier Valley Airport (LWB) to Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15FA049
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N6581U
- Operator
- Stoneman Excavating
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenbrier Valley Airport (LWB), Lewisburg, WVTo Hanover County Municipal Airport (OFP), Ashland, VA
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1962)
- 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 (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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot/owner purchased the airplane 1 month before the accident flight; the airplane had no associated maintenance logs. The pilot applied for and received a special flight permit to ferry the airplane to a facility where maintenance could be performed with the stipulation that a qualified mechanic inspect the airplane before the flight to ensure that it was safe for flight; however, the pilot failed to have this inspection performed.
According to one witness, the taxi, takeoff roll, and initial climb of the accident flight appeared and sounded normal. After reaching about 200 ft above ground level, the airplane leveled off and continued to fly over the runway centerline. Before reaching the end of the runway, the airplane entered a slight left bank, which quickly steepened; the airplane's nose dropped and then returned to a level attitude before it descended out of view. Another witness stated that, about the time that the airplane entered the left bank, it sounded like the engine had lost power but that, shortly thereafter, full engine power appeared to have been restored. A third witness stated that the airplane descended as it oscillated left to right at a relatively steep angle, leveled again, and pitched up and then down just before impact.
Postaccident examination of the airframe revealed no evidence of any mechanical anomalies. During examination of the engine, the magneto-to-engine ignition timing was found to be significantly out of specification for both magnetos, which likely resulted in abnormal engine operation during the climb and may account for the observed leveling off of the airplane just after takeoff; however, it could not be determined whether this was due to reduced engine power output or the pilot's response to an observed anomaly. The witnesses' observations of the takeoff and left turn indicated that the pilot may have been maneuvering for a forced landing or returning to the airport. Their observations are also consistent with the pilot failing to maintain adequate airspeed and the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and experiencing a subsequent aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and experiencing an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident were abnormal engine operation due to improper magneto-to-engine ignition timing and the pilot's failure to have the airplane inspected before the flight as required by the special flight permit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15FA049
- Event ID
- 20141110X63747
- Case number
- ERA15FA049
- 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: 9d61cb52d197a1370cbda243a426ba7db7f03c60aeb5f0a5f60dbaf6634e766e; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:55:25.322Z.