CHI04CA222 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: hard landing
From Huntington Municipal Airport (HHG) to Huntington Municipal Airport (HHG)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA222
- 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
- N201AM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Huntington Municipal Airport (HHG), Huntington, INTo Huntington Municipal Airport (HHG), Huntington, IN
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Flightcrew › Airspeed, not obtained/maintained
- Flightcrew › Directional control, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Flare, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, not successful
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was substantially damaged when it impacted terrain during an aborted landing. The purpose of the flight was to satisfy the dual-instruction flight requirements of a biennial flight review. The flight was being operated in visual meteorological conditions with reported local surface winds of 250 degrees at 11 knots. The pilot performed a simulated forced landing to runway 27 (5,001 feet by 75 feet, dry asphalt) and during the landing flare the airplane "experienced a slight balloon." The flight instructor stated that "the aircraft's stall horn sounded, [and the airplane] began to sink back to the runway as full [engine] power was applied and takeoff flaps were verified." The airplane then proceeded to drift and contact the right (north) edge of the runway. The pilot stated that the increase engine torque caused the airplane's heading to change from the west-northwest to the southwest. The pilot reported the airplane experienced a "slight bounce... touching again briefly on the south [left] edge of the runway." The pilot then established a climb to treetop level, while traveling on a southwesterly heading. Upon reaching treetop altitude the airplane began an unintentional descent resulting in a collision with the terrain about 50 feet south of the runway while on a northerly heading. The pilot and his flight instructor reported that they encountered "wind shear" during the aborted landing, which resulted in the collision with the terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate flare and unsuccessful recovery from a bounced landing, and the pilot's and flight instructor's failure to maintain directional control and airspeed during the subsequent aborted landing, which resulted in a stall. A factor was the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA222
- Event ID
- 20040909X01385
- Case number
- CHI04CA222
- 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. 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: 49c92991b26177394562f053c4b33fbe7d20065acbd9658358a717d57abdaf1a; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:54:13.408Z.