FTW90DPJ04 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From 3WE · St. Louis, MO to Wiley Post Airport (PWA)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW90DPJ04
- 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
- N3514X
- Operator
- Nicholson, David Robert · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Possible conflict
- From 3WE · St. Louis, MOTo Wiley Post Airport (PWA), Oklahoma City, OK
- 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 pattern turn to base
- 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 › Stall/spin, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
DURING A NIGHT VFR APPROACH TO THE AIRPORT, WITNESSES SAW THE AIRPLANE START A TURN TO BASE LEG AND THEN SPIN INTO THE GROUND. THE AIRPLANE WAS DEMOLISHED BY IMPACT AND THE PRIVATE PILOT RECEIVED FATAL INJURIES. THE FLIGHT HAD ORIGINATED IN CHESTER, SC ON THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT. THE PILOT HAD RECEIVED HIS PILOT'S LICENSE ON MARCH 24, 1990, HAD FLOWN THE AIRPLANE TO SOUTH CAROLINA ON MARCH 28, 1990, AND WAS ON HIS WAY BACK TO ARIZONA TO VISIT HIS SICK FATHER. THE PILOT'S TOTAL FLYING TIME WAS 106 HOURS, OF WHICH 6.7 HOURS HAD BEEN FLOWN AT NIGHT.
Probable cause
LOSS OF CONTROL IN FLIGHT WHEN THE PILOT STALLED AND SPUN THE AIRPLANE INADVERTENTLY WHILE TURNING TO THE BASE LEG. A FACTOR WAS LACK OF NIGHT FLYING TIME.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW90DPJ04
- Event ID
- 20001212X22911
- Case number
- FTW90DPJ04
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1990-04-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: de9a940e36d8a3cf15617276103b26d9b67bca6a087c738148adcf950a241494; retrieved 2026-09-21T02:50:15.691Z.