NYC03LA145 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during takeoff
From De Lancey, NY (no airport) to Doylestown Airport (DYL)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA145
- 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 M20J
- 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
- N1084B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From De Lancey, NY (no airport)To Doylestown Airport (DYL), Dolylestown, PA
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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
- On ground/water collision with object
- 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
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 experienced a power loss while en route, and performed a forced landing with no damage into a field that had once been an airport. The airplane was repaired and the pilot prepared for departure. A farmer cut the grass in the field in a 1,500 foot long, by 50 foot wide area for the pilot to use as a runway. An additional 1,600 had recently been cut by the farmer, and it was not re-cut. The pilot reported he attempted a short field takeoff, lifted at 65 to 70 kts, and the airplane did not climb, He settled back, gained more speed and attempted to lift off again. The airplane would not climb, the trees were approaching, and he aborted the takeoff. The airplane struck trees. The on-board passenger reported that the airplane lifted off at 65 kts, nose high, and settled back on the ground, bounced up again, and then the pilot cut the power. A witness said the airplane became airborne in a nose high pitch attitude, settled back to the ground, became airborne again in a nose high pitch attitude. The pilot cut the power and the airplane struck trees. There were no reported problems with the airplane or engine. According to the FAA approved AFM, the airspeed that the pilot reported he used for takeoff were greater than those specified. The field was located in the bottom of a canyon that was about 1,500 feet wide, and would have required the pilot to climb out while remaining below the top of the surrounding terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed decision to perform an aborted takeoff, which did not allow for sufficient room to stop. A factor was the grass runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA145
- Event ID
- 20030708X01036
- Case number
- NYC03LA145
- 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: ed22d509c3ec22e6258afb4a399bb4f24af59e54cb09b5db185ae950dd562579; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:04:29.459Z.