ERA24LA194 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident before flight
From Hornell Municipal Airport (HTF) to Canandaigua Airport (IUA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA194
- 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 M20E
- 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
- N5632Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hornell Municipal Airport (HTF), Hornell, NYTo Canandaigua Airport (IUA), Canandaigua, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1965)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot intended to depart his home airport for another airport to perform an owner-assisted annual inspection. While loading the airplane with supplies, the pilot placed a portable ADS-B receiver on the top of his airplane. The ADS-B receiver utilized a commercially available portable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and the battery was attached to the receiver via a hook and loop fastening. The receiver and battery pack fell from the top of the airplane onto the ramp which resulted in damage to the receiver and battery pack. The pilot attempted to power up the receiver but noted that the receiver was no longer working; he then placed the receiver and battery pack behind the front seats and underneath an airplane cover. The pilot subsequently taxied and began his runup of the engine, during which the pilot noted smoke coming from behind the front seats. The pilot lifted the airplane cover and saw that a fire had started. The pilot exited the airplane and unsuccessfully attempted to remove the airplane cover, which was on fire. The fire eventually consumed most of the cockpit area (including the battery pack itself) and substantially damaged both wings. Based on this information, it is likely that the portable lithium-ion battery pack sustained damage to at least one of the battery cells when it was dropped onto the ramp, resulting in thermal runaway of the battery pack and subsequent fire.
Probable cause
A cabin fire as a result of a damaged lithium-ion battery pack.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA194
- Event ID
- 20240426194155
- Case number
- ERA24LA194
- 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: 9d8e1d894c477ab93c9758269ff8bb0afca1019a8f97efb0aae35fde18a89d93; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:42:10.836Z.