DEN03LA117 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW) to Centennial Airport (APA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA117
- 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 M20C
- 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
- N2686W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mason City Municipal Airport (MCW), Mason City, IATo Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, 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 · 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 › Aircraft 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 received instructions to land on runway 28. The pilot set up for a right downwind, base turn , and final approach. The pilot reported, "On final, I had to crab about 20 degrees to the right and lineup for touchdown." The pilot said that in the flare, he transitioned to a slip, and touched down. The pilot said that just after touchdown, a wind gust picked his airplane up about 10 feet off the runway and rolled the airplane into a 20 degree left bank. The pilot said he attempted to go around, but was unable to level the wings or climb. The pilot said the wind blew his airplane off of the runway. About 35 feet left of the runway's edge, the airplane's left wing struck the terrain and the airplane "cartwheeled." An examination of the airplane revealed no anomalies. Reported winds at the time of the accident were 060 degrees at 6 knots, gusting to 30 knots. A peak wind of 360 degrees at 30 knots was recorded 1 minute after the accident time. Density altitude was 9,152 feet msl.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during landing. Factors contributing to the accident were the gusting crosswinds and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA117
- Event ID
- 20030707X01020
- Case number
- DEN03LA117
- 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: 90d6fbaf36152a6d5edb4bd3363ad2ddd2fd434c2534ce09771a7fc3db62ad70; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:04:19.544Z.