ATL05CA030 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during an uncontrolled descent
From Statesville Regional Airport (SVH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL05CA030
- 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
- N2201
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Statesville Regional Airport (SVH), Statesville, NCTo not recorded
- 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
- Uncontrolled descent
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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(cfi) › Flight controls, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated he was conducting an instructional flight with a private pilot who had been having problems with performing the soft field takeoff maneuver. The flight instructor stated he did not brief the private pilot on positive transfer of the flight controls before departing on the flight. The private pilot taxied out to runway 28 and completed the required takeoff checks and taxied into position for takeoff. The private pilot started the takeoff roll. When the airplane reached rotation speed the private pilot did not rotate the airplane. The flight instructor verbally informed the pilot to rotate the airplane. The pilot did not respond to the flight instructors instructions. The flight instructor pulled back on the control yoke and the airplane became airborne in a nose up attitude with both pilots on the on the flight controls. The flight instructor stated, "the airplane stalled and the left wing dropped down." The flight instructor verbally instructed the pilot to release the flight controls and he complied with his instructions. The flight instructor leveled the airplane as it collided with the ground off the left side of the runway. The airplane continued forward and collided with a fence before it came to a stop. When asked if the airplane had any mechanical problems before the accident the flight instructor stated no. He further stated, "the accident was his fault, he failed to exercise good cockpit resource management by not properly transferring the flight controls, resulting in the airspeed not being maintained when he pulled back on the control yoke."
Probable cause
the flight instructors improper use of the flight controls on rotation during a short field takeoff resulting in the airplane becoming airborne, stall, and collision with the ground. A factor in the accident was the instructors failure to brief procedures for a positive transfere of the flight controls with the pilot receiving instruction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL05CA030
- Event ID
- 20041214X01981
- Case number
- ATL05CA030
- 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: e1faa9ff6c56c87208bd38aef96db2efbe5320dbe24d7f3d85ecdd8515260ede; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:29:16.070Z.