WPR21LA141 · Mooney M20B
Mooney M20B · Accident: fuel related en route
From Fort Stockton Pecos County Airport (KFST) to Tucson International Airport (KTUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA141
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 M20B
- 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
- N74786
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Stockton Pecos County Airport (KFST), Ft Stockton, TXTo Tucson International Airport (KTUS), Tucson, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1961)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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 systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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 a night instrument flight rules cross-country flight, the airplane encountered weather that included clouds and icing conditions. Shortly thereafter, the engine began to run rough and lose power; radar contact was lost, and the airplane was located in mountainous terrain. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Weather conditions reported at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at cruise power settings. The pilot reported that, during a climb into clouds, with the carburetor heat off, the engine began to run rough and was losing rpms before he applied carburetor heat. Therefore, it is likely that carburetor ice accumulated during the climb, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed use in the operation of carburetor heat which resulted in a loss of engine power due to carburetor icing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA141
- Event ID
- 20210324102801
- Case number
- WPR21LA141
- 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, cause areas. 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: c57da96bb17c078f5dcbd6eb8a21fcd7c228eeb005a4e0a58503561e55cd9411; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:51:51.225Z.