CEN21LA373 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: electrical system malfunction/failure en route
From London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA373
- 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 M20F
- 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
- N6474Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ), London, KYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Electrical system malfunction/failure
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that airplane’s electrical charging system malfunctioned during cruise flight in night visual meteorological conditions. He reduced the airplane’s electrical load by pulling the circuit breakers for everything besides the transponder. The pilot continued to the intended destination and manually extended the landing gear to conserve battery power; however, while in the traffic pattern, there was insufficient battery power remaining to turn-on the runway lights using the airplane’s radio. The pilot completed a low pass over the runway before deciding to go-around and reenter the traffic pattern and land. During the first landing, the airplane landed hard and bounced several times before the pilot increased engine power and aborted the landing. On the second landing, the airplane bounced 3 times before it settled onto the runway. The pilot applied brakes briefly before he increased engine power for another aborted landing because he saw the departure end of the runway approaching. The airplane’s left wing was substantially damaged when it impacted a fence post during the aborted landing. The pilot suggested that the accident could have been prevented had he used his available mobile phone to call the airport manager to turn on the runway lights, or if he had a hand-held radio to use after the battery became depleted. The alternator drive belt was not located after the accident and is believed to have separated from the airplane earlier in the flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delayed decision to abort the landing that resulted in a collision with a fence post. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the alternator drive belt during cruise flight for unknown reasons and the subsequent inoperative electrical system when the airplane’s battery became depleted.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA373
- Event ID
- 20210817103720
- Case number
- CEN21LA373
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2021-07-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 16faf86ef77e283cb724275e81f631b871b822e02b22b96493499c61cf9cb396; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:26:05.277Z.