ATL03LA088 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Baldwin County Regional Airport (KMLJ) to Camilla Mitchell County Airport (CXU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA088
- 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
- N201EZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baldwin County Regional Airport (KMLJ), Millageville, GATo Camilla Mitchell County Airport (CXU), Camilla, GA
- 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
- 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
According to the pilot, the purpose of the flight was to return the airplane to the repair station where he had previously gotten an annual inspection completed. The pilot had complained about a landing gear and strut problem during landing and takeoff. Due to the gear and strut problem, the pilot elected to perform a soft field takeoff from runway 10. According to a witness at the airport, the airplane was first heard in the runup area, and next seen climbing out from the runway. The airplane was then seen about 50 feet above the ground, in a nose high attitude, and in a 60-degree left bank. The airplane continued to bank until the left wingtip was in a 90 degree left bank and then it collided with the ground. The aircraft spun across the ground and came to rest in a tree line left of runway 10 at Baldwin County Airport. Examination of the aircraft the after accident revealed that both wings were bent at the spars, and the nose section forward of the fire wall was displaced to the left. The pilot did not report a mechanical problem with the airplane during the takeoff and initial climb.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during climbout which resulted in a low altitude stall and subsequent in-flight collision with the terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA088
- Event ID
- 20030506X00622
- Case number
- ATL03LA088
- 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: 2276b1a6bb29e50ac6f8deeae4daf6b71e5cafb9d63df63a2b10e8e22e812671; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:30:01.574Z.