CEN21LA423 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Livingston County Spencer J. Hardy Airport (KOZW) to Oakland County International Airport (KPTK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA423
- 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 M20J
- 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
- N823SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Livingston County Spencer J. Hardy Airport (KOZW), Howell, MITo Oakland County International Airport (KPTK), Pontiac, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1976)
- 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
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before takeoff, the pilot estimated that 19 gallons of fuel remained in the airplane based on approximate flight time and fuel burn since the last refueling. His displays read 30 gallons remaining. He departed on a 20 nautical mile flight and shortly after takeoff the engine began to run rough. The engine stopped running rough and the pilot scanned the engine instruments which displayed normal readings. The pilot continued to his destination but had second thoughts and decided to return to his home field. While in cruise flight at 4,500 ft mean sea level, the engine quit. The pilot performed a forced landing to a corn field. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings during the forced landing.
A postaccident examination determined there was no fuel in the right tank and 6.5 gallons in the left tank. When electrical power was applied to the airplane, the right tank display indicated ½ full. The fuel quantity of the airplane was last calibrated in 2006 when it was modified with a dual bladder system.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection of the airplane’s fuel quantity, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA423
- Event ID
- 20210917103893
- Case number
- CEN21LA423
- 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, 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: 82ee43396b6f31dcbebcda9964a945b46ad8c2702ebfb2b77d17cb0c8d96fade; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:32:54.821Z.