IAD00FA079 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Deck Airport (9D4) to Dee Jay Airport (8PA1)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00FA079
- 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
- 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
- N9436V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Deck Airport (9D4), Lebanon, PATo Dee Jay Airport (8PA1), Jonestown, PA
- 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission (marked)
- 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 › Aborted landing, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot aborted a landing on a private sod strip 1,800 feet in length. The runway was oriented approximately 090 and 270 degrees magnetic, with trees at the east end, and trees, houses, and power lines at the west end. The pilot landed to the west with a 14-knot tailwind. During the aborted landing, the airplane struck wires, stalled, rolled inverted, and crashed beyond the departure end of the runway. Examination of the wreckage revealed no pre-impact anomalies. Interpolation of performance charts revealed that the airplane required 1,754 feet of runway to land over a 50-foot obstacle with a 14-knot tailwind. A review of pharmacy records and toxicological testing revealed the pilot had ingested an unapproved pain medication prior to flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in aborting the landing, which resulted in a collision with transmission wires. Factors in the accident were the pilot's improper inflight decision to attempt a landing with a 14-knot tailwind, and his use of an unapproved pain medication.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00FA079
- Event ID
- 20001212X21740
- Case number
- IAD00FA079
- 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, coordinates. 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: 28ca992b3dba3e1836d6d309d16f0f579f1e264d7587496707104930a65f4203; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:54:16.290Z.