NYC91FA058 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC91FA058
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N231MC
- Operator
- William R. Whitney · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE), Columbia, SCTo 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
- Approach
- 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/spin
- 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(vs), not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
- Terrain condition › Ground
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT INFORMED PERSONNEL ON THE GROUND THAT HE HAD THE AIRPORT INSIGHT, BUT WAS STILL INBOUND ON THE NDB APPROACH. THE PILOT EXPRESSED A CONCERN ABOUT THE WEATHER AND THAT HE WAS TOO HIGH AND COULD NOT MAKE THE LANDING. A PILOT FLYING IN THE AREA AT THE TIME SAID THE CEILINGS WERE RAGGED AND AT TIMES THE VISIBILITY WAS LOW. THE AIRPLANE WAS OBSERVED TO BE MIDIFIELD AT A LOW ALTITUDE, TURNING LEFT, LOSING ALTITUDE AND SPEED. THE AIRPLANE WAS THEN 'STALLED AND SPUN' INTO THE GROUND. EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE SHOWED NO DISCREPANCIES WITH EITHER THE AIRFRAME OR THE ENGINE.
Probable cause
THE PILOT ALLOWED THE SPEED OF THE AIRPLANE TO GET TOO SLOW, RESULTING IN AN INADVERTANT STALL AT TOO LOW AN ALTITUDE TO ALLOW RECOVERY. A FACTOR RELATING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE PILOT'S TREPIDATION ABOUT A SUCCESSFUL LANDING BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC91FA058
- Event ID
- 20001212X16365
- Case number
- NYC91FA058
- 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: b30d1c08d36c4ffd06012489d02ff0f6c27aec94ece97edda78b1c2ec7aa184f; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:01:54.988Z.