NYC03LA083 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From New York Stewart International Airport (SWF) to Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA083
- 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 M20K
- 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
- N231LS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New York Stewart International Airport (SWF), Newburgh, NYTo Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1), West Milford, NJ
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- 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 flew from his home airport to another airport to drop off a friend, who was to pick up another airplane. When they landed at the other airport there was a nose wheel shimmy. The pilot shut the engine down at the fixed base operator, and both he and the other pilot got out to check the nose wheel. He could find nothing wrong, and when the friend was ready, they both departed in their separate airplanes to return to their home airport. When they arrived, the other airplane landed first. The accident pilot flew his approach to the 4,000 foot long runway 6, with the flaps set to 20 degrees. After touch down, the nose of the airplane veered to the right; however, he did not recall any shimmy of the nose wheel. He pulled back on the yoke to ease the nose up, but he pulled back too hard and the airplane became airborne again. He thought he would touch down on the runway again, but instead, the airplane landed between the runway and taxiway, and struck rocks. The pilot said he did not experience any other mechanical problems during the landing. The pilot estimated the winds to be variable at 5 knots. Winds reported at the other airport, about 30 miles northeast were from 120 at 7 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for the crosswind and his failure to maintain directional control. Factors in the accident were the crosswind and landing at night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA083
- Event ID
- 20030415X00506
- Case number
- NYC03LA083
- 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 2003-04-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5e8ccef615ad4d6690ea38584961edca37131ecfbb4b2fbb512225877dca1f88; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:29:10.345Z.