FTW84FA302 · Mooney M-18LA
Mooney M-18LA · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW84FA302
- 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 M-18LA
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M-18
- 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
- N4090
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA), New Iberia, LATo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Wing, spar › Deteriorated
- Wing, spar › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A PLT WITNESS OBSERVED THE ACFT IN A 20 TO 30 DEG DIVE AT HIGH SPEED JUST PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT. HE REPORTED THAT AT AN ALT OF ABOUT 1200 TO 1300 FT, THE ACFT BEGAN A PULL-UP. AS THE PULL-UP WAS STARTED, THE OUTBOARD PORTION OF THE ACFT'S LEFT WING FOLDED UPWARD & THE ACFT INTERED AN UNCONTROLLED DIVE & CRASHED. THE OUTBOARD 3 FT OF THE LEFT WING WAS FOUND RELATIVELY INTACT. THE REMAINDER OF THE WING WAS BROKEN IN NUMEROUS PIECES. ALSO, THE LEFT AILERON WAS BENT UPWARD ABOUT 3 FT FROM ITS OUTBOARD END. AN EXAM OF THE WOODEN STRUCTURE REVEALED DISCOLORATION IN THE FRACTURE AREA. EVIDENCE OF WOOD DETERIORATION & DECAY WAS FOUND IN LOCALIZED AREAS AROUND WING FASTENERS. A TOXICOLOGICAL CHECK OF THE PLT'S BLOOD SHOWED SOME ALCOHOL (0.04%); HOWEVER, THE PLT'S BODY HAD NOT BEEN IMMEDIATELY REMOVED FROM THE WRECKAGE. THE AMOUNT OF ALCOHOL DUE TO PUTREFACTION WAS NOT DETERMINED. THE PLT'S LAST MEDICAL CERTIFICATE WAS DATED 12/18/81.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW84FA302
- Event ID
- 20001214X40306
- Case number
- FTW84FA302
- 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: 2b8bdfe0480aa8f8e4b63266c4203a3d952b281e397bd032c8bb13813dbeb5d6; retrieved 2026-09-21T05:27:14.807Z.