CEN15FA051 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC on approach
From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0) to Stevens Field (PSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA051
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N6466U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0), Moriarty, NMTo Stevens Field (PSO), Pagosa Springs, CO
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The noninstrument-rated pilot was conducting a personal cross-country flight. There was no record that the pilot received a weather briefing from any official source before the flight. However, before departure, the pilot telephoned the fixed-based operator (FBO) at the destination airport to reserve a rental car. The FBO manager advised the pilot not to attempt the flight due to inclement weather in the area; the conditions included heavy snow and poor visibility. The pilot stated he was "a professional pilot" and that he would be flying into the airport that day.
The FBO manager reported that, as the airplane was approaching the airport, he received a "scratchy unintelligible transmission" over the Unicom frequency. A few minutes later, he heard another transmission from the same source and the word "Mooney." Shortly thereafter, the FBO heard a clear transmission from the pilot indicating that he was 10 miles south of the airport. He then advised the pilot that the weather conditions were "100 [ft] overcast and a quarter-mile visibility in snow." The FBO manager reported that, shortly later, he went outside and heard an airplane approaching and then circling to the south and that he estimated that the airplane was "probably below 1,000 feet" above ground level. Shortly thereafter, the pilot called the Unicom frequency and asked if the runway lights were at their highest intensity setting. The FBO manager confirmed that they were and asked the pilot what his intentions were. The pilot replied, "I need to get out of the weather." No further communications were received from the pilot.
Air traffic control radar showed that the airplane was southeast of the airport at 9,100 ft mean sea level at the last radar point, and the wreckage was located in mountainous terrain. An examination of the airplane revealed no preimpact anomalies. The pilot's improper decision to fly to the destination airport and into known meteorological conditions likely resulted in his controlled flight into mountainous terrain.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's improper decision to fly to the destination airport and into known instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in his controlled flight into mountainous terrain during a snow storm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA051
- Event ID
- 20141119X62539
- Case number
- CEN15FA051
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2014-11-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b4d6607f5e0041d8951a05a2598f5e1aab14745f9360fb84163741e36fe5d921; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:28:52.462Z.