NYC01LA186 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: hard landing
From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN) to Freeway Airport (W00)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA186
- 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 M20J
- 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
- N4223H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Easton Airport / Newnam Field (ESN), Easton, MDTo Freeway Airport (W00), Mitchellville, MD
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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/mush
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mitchellville, MD, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While landing, the pilot began to flare the airplane about 20-30 feet above the runway. The CFI informed the pilot that they were too high and he should lower the nose; however, the pilot did not respond. Before the CFI could take corrective action, the airplane touched down hard on the main landing gear, and bounced back into the air. Deciding that she wanted to see if the pilot could regain control of the airplane, the CFI elected not to take corrective action. The pilot added full power and pulled back on the yoke until the airplane entered a stall. The CFI assumed the flight controls and pushed forward on the control yoke with both hands. The left wing of the airplane then struck the ground, and the CFI aborted the go-around. The airplane touched down hard on the runway again, collapsing the right main and nose landing gear, departed the left side of the runway, and came to rest in a grass field.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the airplane during an aborted landing, and her delay in remedial action. A factor related to the accident was the excessive trim setting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA186
- Event ID
- 20010803X01592
- Case number
- NYC01LA186
- 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: 3dcc89bd239efd9d8a8e1ff3e79643eafabd359c4338793f15e015639e283962; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:44:05.716Z.