SEA02LA031 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Glasgow Valley County Airport Wokal Field (GGW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA031
- 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 M20E
- 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
- N38AJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glasgow Valley County Airport Wokal Field (GGW), Glasgow, MTTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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/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 › Airspeed, not maintained
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 initiated his takeoff on runway 12 in the Mooney M20E and rotated at 60-65 MPH. He then raised the manually operated landing gear but had difficulty securing the gear retraction handle in the down (gear up and locked) position. During this event he became distracted with securing the gear in the up and locked position and the aircraft transitioned to a nose high and slow airspeed condition. A witness observed the aircraft reaching no more than 40-50 feet in altitude and rolling left. The pilot recognized this condition and pitched the nose down to increase airspeed. The aircraft impacted off the left side of the runway with its right wing, skidding across the runway and coming to rest on the south side of the runway; and the right wing displayed aft and upward bending with 45 degree scratch markings on its underside. Post crash examination revealed the gear retracted but not in the up and locked position. Wings level stall speed for a takeoff flap setting (15 degrees) in the M20E was documented in the Owner's Manual as 64 MPH.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate flying airspeed resulting in a stall/mush condition and loss of control at low altitude. A contributing factor was the pilot's distraction from flying the aircraft while attempting to retract the landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA031
- Event ID
- 20020204X00175
- Case number
- SEA02LA031
- 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: 677ab57d88f71a84f5ab964f3cbd117f0f3a33ab00a291a1d7d4a2b6b113228a; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:47:16.299Z.