ERA17LA175 · Mooney M20R
Premier Metals Recovery Mooney M20R · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during initial climb
From Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR) to Charleston International Airport (CHS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA175
- 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 M20R
- 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
- N20835
- Operator
- Premier Metals Recovery
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Myrtle Beach International Airport (MYR), Myrtle Beach, SCTo Charleston International Airport (CHS), Charleston, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2000)
- 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 (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
During initial climb from a coastal airport for the personal flight, when the airplane was about 300 ft above ground level, the engine lost total power. The private pilot ditched the airplane in the ocean near the shore. The pilot was rescued, but the airplane sank and was not recovered. The airplane's most recent annual inspection was completed about 7 months before the accident. The airplane's engine was overhauled about 6 months before the accident and had accrued 138 hours of operation from the time of overhaul until the accident. During that time, the oil had been changed and the filter element inspected three times with no abnormalities noted. Because the airplane was not recovered from the ocean and could not be examined, the reason for the total loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power during initial climb for reasons that could not be determined because the airplane sank in the ocean and was not recovered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA175
- Event ID
- 20170510X04511
- Case number
- ERA17LA175
- 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: 1ee039774876e2444768573adc1f62ae601aad2f19f3193a6eec6162333d4cc2; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:15:57.276Z.