CEN16LA200 · Mooney M20 F
Mooney M20 F · Accident: fuel contamination during takeoff
From North Little Rock Municipal Airport (KORK) to Blytheville Municipal Airport (KHKA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16LA200
- 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 M20 F
- 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
- N6371Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Little Rock Municipal Airport (KORK), Little Rock, ARTo Blytheville Municipal Airport (KHKA), Blytheville, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private-rated pilot was taking off in the airplane when the airplane's engine began to sputter and lose power. He elected to reduce engine power and land on the remaining runway; however, he had already retracted the landing gear. The pilot lowered the landing gear handle, but was not able to lock the gear into place before the airplane impacted the runway and the nose gear collapsed. Postaccident examination of the airplane found water in the left and right wing fuel tanks, as well as the engine's carburetor. It is likely that the loss of engine power was a result of the water contamination of the fuel system.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to water contamination of the fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16LA200
- Event ID
- 20160601X91155
- Case number
- CEN16LA200
- 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: 2635572d812732c1243da085a3b17f16733fe1c79747a8dd5c3863e7f067f3d0; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:27:16.268Z.