ERA16CA246 · Mooney M20 J
Mooney M20 J · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Barkley Regional Airport (PAH) to Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16CA246
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20 J
- 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
- N3877H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Barkley Regional Airport (PAH), Paducah, KYTo Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP), Panama City, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1980)
- 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 · change of cruise level
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he was conducting a cross-country flight and flying in instrument meteorological conditions at 7,000 ft mean sea level (msl) when the airplane encountered turbulence. While climbing to a higher altitude, he encountered extreme turbulence at 8,500 ft msl. The pilot lost control of the airplane, which entered an uncontrolled dive, and descended to 5,600 ft msl before he was able to regain control. The pilot subsequently landed without further incident. A postflight inspection of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the right wing spar. The pilot reported no preexisting mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation; however, he stated that he may have overstressed the airplane during the recovery from the uncontrolled descent. A review of weather data revealed that there were no SIGMETs or AIRMETs for turbulence issued for the area of the accident around the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The flight's encounter with unforecast extreme turbulence, which resulted in a loss of airplane control and structural damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16CA246
- Event ID
- 20160708X95825
- Case number
- ERA16CA246
- 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: b3b1693e78c00cb22cab4131aed9585e01f86a213bc334804703c7ed5907b649; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:38:17.806Z.