LAX96LA256 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: overrun during landing
From Palo Alto Airport (PAO) to Q94
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA256
- 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
- N3229F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palo Alto Airport (PAO), Palo Alto, CATo Q94
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Overrun
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed(vref), not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Distance/speed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the winds were calm when he crossed the threshold 'a little high and 10 knots fast' on the 2,620-foot-long runway 17. The pilot said, 'I was able to get the wheels on the ground before midfield, but I bounced the airplane and had a very hard time getting it back on the runway.' The pilot was unable to stop the aircraft prior to running off the departure end about 5 mph. The aircraft traveled about 15 feet into an area of tall dried grass. As the pilot shut down the engine he noticed a fire behind the aircraft's wing and evacuated the aircraft. By the time the pilot could get to a phone, telephone for help, and the local fire department responded, the aircraft was engulfed in flames and eventually consumed by the ground fire.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain/maintain the proper approach airspeed, his failure to attain the proper runway touchdown point, and his failure to initiate a go-around when a landing overshoot became apparent. A factor in the accident was the airport management's failure to ensure that the overrun area was clear of potential fire hazards.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA256
- Event ID
- 20001208X06272
- Case number
- LAX96LA256
- 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: 7b348c7d0881a29468e5423e6d53868cedcd5a38482be36a0a78652e9feb3879; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:03:16.285Z.