Mooney M20 crash

I’ve heard that a Mooney M20 was intercepted by a pair of F-16s after it was seen to have been flying erratically and radio contact was lost. I also heard that the plane crashed somewhere. I didn’t catch where this happened. Can someone enlighten me?

Only slightly more info. It was in Muncie, Indiana.

Thanks, Elvis.

Sounds like altitude excursions, speeding up in a dive and slowing down in a dive.

We’ll have to wait for the NTSB report of course, but at 23,000 feet hypoxia is a good hypothesis.

Like a plane gone out of trim due to fuel consumption and not being corrected.

If that was all it was, and the guy was otherwise healthy, he’d have come out of it in the dive. 'Course he might have already been dead by then, perhaps of a heart attack, which perhaps might have been induced by hypoxia. Or something else, but anyway he looks to have been dead long before he crashed.

FWIW Mooney pilots have to suck their oxygen from a tube; they’re not pressurized.

My first thought was, 'What? They can’t use a cannula or a mask?

I forgot that most people are only familiar with aircraft that are.

I had to look it up – Mooney M20 - Wikipedia

According to FlightAware, the aircraft first headed north towards Traverse City before turning south. WTF? I’m not sure whether the data from FlightAware is wrong, or something truly bizarre happened.

This trip (GRR-MIE) should normally only be a quick one hour leg in a Mooney. There’s no way any sane pilot would plan for such a high altitude for such a short trip. I would guess the pilot probably passed out during the climb out.

If autopilot was set on angle of climb then it may have been stalling out and recovering on it’s own. 23,000 feet has to be the upper limit of the airplane.

Grand Rapids? Muncie? Mooney M20?

Dammit - I have phone calls to make, I might have known that guy… (hope I’m wrong on that)

Well, relief in one sense, in that it’s no one in the Mooney partnership I know who were involved, and the airplane has a different N number than the Mooney I know, but I still hate hearing that anyone crashed.