ERA19LA062 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Lincoln Park Airport (N07) to Dutchess County Airport (POU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19LA062
- 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 M20K
- 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
- N5756W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Park Airport (N07), Lincoln Park, NJTo Dutchess County Airport (POU), Poughkeepsie, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1984)
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, the pilot noticed an increase in cylinder head temperature on two cylinders and unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the temperature. He reported that he soon heard "an explosion" and noted a hole in the engine cowling. He performed a forced landing to a golf course, during which the landing gear collapsed, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the Nos. 1 and 2 connecting rods exhibited thermal discoloration consistent with a loss of lubrication. Additionally, the breakaway torques measured at 8 of the 12 through-bolts showed that they were below the manufacturer's specifications. The No. 2 main bearing saddles exhibited impingement damage, and the No. 2 bearing was partially rotated clockwise, which blocked the oil passages leading to the connecting rod bearings. The mating surfaces of the main bearing saddles had remnants of silk thread around the through-bolt holes, which was contrary to manufacturer guidance that prohibited placing silk thread in these areas. Given this information, it is likely that maintenance personnel applied silk thread to a prohibited area during an engine overhaul that occurred about 255.8 flight hours before the accident. This resulted in a loss of torque on the crankcase through-bolts, which allowed the No. 2 main bearings to shift, resulting in restriction of lubrication to that area and subsequent engine failure.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel's improper assembly of the engine during overhaul, which resulted in lubrication restriction due to a bearing shift and the subsequent engine failure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19LA062
- Event ID
- 20181209X33123
- Case number
- ERA19LA062
- 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: 6f4937a93b265b27e4200c2774d5cabaeae9f6dec8beb6ef82f37c6e8bea0dba; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:29:04.242Z.