LAX03LA085 · Mooney M20D
Mooney M20D · Accident: gear collapsed during landing
From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ) to Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA085
- 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 M20D
- 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
- N6639U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ), Casa Grande, AZTo Casa Grande Municipal Airport (CGZ), Casa Grande, AZ
- 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
- Gear collapsed
- 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
- Owner/pilot mechanic › Maintenance, adjustment, incorrect
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following a normal touchdown and during the rollout, the airplane's main landing gear collapsed. Thereafter, as the airplane slid to a stop it veered off the runway and collided with a runway light. The pilot reported that during his approach for landing, he had verified that the landing gear was extended. He had confirmed its extension by observing the green gear down lights illuminate. The pilot had previously performed maintenance to the landing gear system. The airplane had been operated for 4.77 hours since receiving its last annual inspection. According to the pilot, the gear collapsed due to an adjustment problem, which prevented the over-center linkage from completely locking. The FAA indicated that the pilot, who holds an airframe and powerplant mechanic certificate, had performed the landing gear related maintenance.
Probable cause
Collapse of the landing gear during landing rollout, resulting from the pilot/mechanic's incorrect landing gear locking mechanism (linkage) adjustment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA085
- Event ID
- 20030215X00227
- Case number
- LAX03LA085
- 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: 3f6414bd101f1d56371b51d60216573ad4d4d8a4ce0743d9d29fc5061aaea3a0; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:38:43.451Z.