NYC95LA091 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95LA091
- 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 M20K
- 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
- N252DX
- Operator
- William H. Eilberg · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Landing · aborted
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, misjudged
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Marshfield, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT HAD LANDED THE AIRPLANE ON RUNWAY 6. HE STATED, 'I FLARED FOR LANDING, BUT THE AIRCRAFT BOUNCED, POSSIBLY DUE TO WIND SHIFTING.' THE REPORTED WINDS AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT WERE 140 DEGREES, AT 12 KNOTS. THE PILOT ELECTED TO GO AROUND, AND APPLIED POWER TO THE ENGINE. HE STATED, 'THE ENGINE NEVER DEVELOPED TAKE-OFF POWER. IT CONTINUED TO FLY CLOSE TO THE GROUND. SINCE THE ENGINE DID NOT STOP, I DID NOT BELIEVE IT HAD FAILED.' THE INVESTIGATION REVEALED THAT THE PILOT TWISTED THE VERNIER THROTTLE, BUT DID NOT REACH FULL THROTTLE. THE ENGINE EXAMINATION DID NOT REVEAL ANY DISCREPANCIES. THE AIRPLANE IMPACTED IN A MARSH, NEAR THE RUNWAY.
Probable cause
the pilot misjudged the flare, resulting in a bounced landing and impact with the terrain. A factor in this accident was an improper recovery from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95LA091
- Event ID
- 20001207X03368
- Case number
- NYC95LA091
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 38c84ca6496daf886196b369fec7ad4c03dd6c0d0a4580f110a3f358a6750226; retrieved 2026-09-23T00:01:33.260Z.