MIA01LA057 · Mooney M-20C
Mooney M-20C · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) to Jacksonville, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA057
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-20C
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M-20
- 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
- N6807N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jacksonville International Airport (JAX), Jacksonville, FLTo Jacksonville, FL
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, elevator control › Disconnected
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, following power application after his first touch and go landing, the aircraft assumed an extremely nose high attitude, and he realized he had no pitch control, limited rudder control, and full aileron control. He was able to control pitch attitude with throttle setting, and conducted an emergency landing in a field adjacent to the airport, sustaining substantial damage. Postcrash examination revealed a disconnect in the pitch controls at the aft pitch control rod-end-to-bellcrank connection in the tailcone. Examination of the components revealed that the pitch control rod-end eye was missed when the connecting bolt was pushed through the bellcrank side plate holes. When the nut was fitted to the bolt and tightened, the result was a connection that was only a "squeezed", friction fit. About 12 flight hours before the accident, on October 24, 2000, the aircraft underwent a 100-hour inspection, at which time the following was entered in the logbook, "Checked all control push rods and rod end bearings. Lubricated Flight Controls". On April 24, 1980, Mooney Aircraft Corporation recognized a potential for a misconnection between the rod end and the bellcrank and promulgated Service Instruction M20-44, which had not been accomplished on this aircraft.
Probable cause
The failure of maintenance personnel to properly reconnect the aircraft's elevator control system, resulting in an in-flight disconnection of the elevator control and jamming of the rudder control during climb, the subsequent in-flight loss of control, and terrain collision following an emergency descent and landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA057
- Event ID
- 20010312X00575
- Case number
- MIA01LA057
- 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: 127f78a4d8be4fc29309071fb75eb9368447fecae4d78acb258bf1fa8c80c354; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:14:32.048Z.