DEN03LA013 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA013
- 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
- N9288M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, COTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (BJC), Broomfield, CO
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 on ground/water
- 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
- Landing gear, steering system › Sheared
- Pilot in command › Directional control, 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 said he made a full flap landing. Instead of keeping the nose wheel off the runway, he relaxed elevator back pressure. When the nose wheel contacted the runway, the airplane swerved to the left. The pilot attempted to straighten the airplane using right rudder and brakes, but was unsuccessfull and he lost directional control. The airplane went off the runway and traveled across snow-covered grass. The right main and nose landing gears collapsed, and the airplane slid to a halt on the upslope side of a drainage ditch parallel to the runway. Postaccident examination disclosed the steering horn attach bolt was sheared at the nut end and the bolt head was slightly backed away from the nose gear truss where it attached. Mooney Service Bulletin M20-169, dated July 18, 1968, requires the replacement of the AN3-20A bolt with a NAS623-3-29 screw. This had not been accomplished. No brake discrepancies were noted. It could not be determined if the bolt had sheared prior to or upon touchdown or during the impact sequence. The pilot later said that if he had held the nose wheel off the runway as long as possible instead of relaxing elevator back pressure when the airplane touched down, speed would have dissipated and he could have kept the airplane on the runway by using differential braking. Damage consisted of collapsed right main and nose landing gears, buckled wing and nose gear attach points, firewall, several wing ribs, and crushed wing tips and tail cone.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control after landing due to a sheared steering horn attach bolt that should have been replaced by maintenance personnel in compliance with an outstanding service bulletin. Contributing factors included the pilot's improper aircraft handling (relaxing elevator back pressure at high speed during rollout) and the ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA013
- Event ID
- 20021118X05476
- Case number
- DEN03LA013
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-11-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 349de0bf9dec79c4c3f1d07a155a316225f823339840fde8061169c809a9253f; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:58:43.944Z.