FTW98LA018 · Mooney M20F
Texas A&M Flying Club Mooney M20F · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC) to Easterwood Field (CLL)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA018
- 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 M20F
- 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
- N7433V
- Operator
- Texas A&m Flying Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OKC Will Rogers World Airport (OKC), Oklahoma City, OKTo Easterwood Field (CLL), TX
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The night cross country flight originated at Manhattan, Kansas, where the four college students aboard the airplane attended a Kansas State-Texas A&M football game. The flight had landed at Oklahoma City for fuel near midnight. The pilot reported that he had visual contact with the Easterbrook Field Airport when 15 miles north of the airport. After obtaining the weather, he initiated a descent for a straight-in approach to Runway 16. The pilot added 'while on short final he felt that his rate of descent was too steep' so he elected to execute a go-around when the airplane was approximately 40 feet above the runway. The pilot reported that 'the airplane stalled after he applied full power and retracted the landing gear and flaps.' In the enclosed statement, under the heading of 'Other General Observations,' the pilot stated that he was extremely fatigued due to the 20 hour day, the 8.5 hour flight-day and the chronic fatigue from being a college student. He also noted that he felt extreme pressure from the passengers to get back to Texas ('get-there-itis'). The pilot also stated that this was only his second night landing in the airplane and he considered himself 'to have low time' in the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during a go-around. Factors were :the pilot's premature retraction of the flaps, his lack of total experience in the airplane, the dark night illumination, pilot fatigue, and pressure induced by the passengers to complete the night flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA018
- Event ID
- 20001208X09013
- Case number
- FTW98LA018
- 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: c8e91a70fe02f31efe947bc73017a95fa39f8a28f2e4ff1850b34a6f6c2119e8; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:46:25.586Z.