DEN04CA117 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Central Wyoming Regional Airport (RIW) to Jackson Hole Airport (JAC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04CA117
- 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
- N11640
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Central Wyoming Regional Airport (RIW), Riverton, WYTo Jackson Hole Airport (JAC), Jackson Hole, WY
- 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 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/mush
- 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
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
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, he had attempted to land on runway 19 but had performed a go-around because of windshear approximately 15 to 20 feet agl. During the second attempt to land, he increased his airspeed to compensate for the wind. The pilot reported that during the landing flare "the bottom dropped out." He increased power to go around but the airplane continued to sink. The airplane drifted to the left and subsequently struck a runway light causing substantial damage. The Automated Weather Observation System reported the winds at 1640 as 210 degrees at 9 knots. The pilot estimated that the winds at the time of the accident were 250 degrees at 10 to 15 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control resulting in a stall/mush. Contributing factors include the windshear, the crosswind and the runway light.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04CA117
- Event ID
- 20040908X01360
- Case number
- DEN04CA117
- 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: 3aaff0156931bac7266dc05534b238a13d97ccc9c212f4537161cadb2b971d1f; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:10:25.717Z.