CEN17LA068 · Mooney Aircraft CORP. M20 K
Mooney Aircraft CORP. M20 K · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV) to A L Mangham Jr. Regional Airport (OCH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA068
- 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 Aircraft CORP. M20 K
- 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
- N1159G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV), Kerrville, TXTo A L Mangham Jr. Regional Airport (OCH), Nacogdoches, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1982)
- 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 · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 (total)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a cross-country personal flight. He reported that he entered the downwind pattern at his home airfield and prepared the airplane to land using the manufacturer's checklist, which included selecting the fullest fuel tank, setting flaps to 5°, and lowering the landing gear. While on an extended downwind leg, the pilot noticed that the airplane had descended to between 700 and 800 ft above ground level, so he added engine power to climb back to pattern altitude, but the engine stopped producing power. The pilot turned the airplane toward the runway, which he estimated was more than 1.5 miles away. He realized that he was not going to be able to glide the configured airplane to the runway, so he performed a forced landing to a field but landed short in a wooded area.
Examination and testing of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Maintenance had recently been conducted on the fuel selector's union fitting. The mechanic who conducted the maintenance reported purging the lines of air and conducting a successful postmaintenance test flight before releasing the airplane to the pilot. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination and testing of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA068
- Event ID
- 20170105X51011
- Case number
- CEN17LA068
- 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: 961125ee7b4768c8c132639b0282592c088b6899899a5ac24c8c0b450c6f4ecf; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:55:57.186Z.