CHI05CA092 · Mooney M20M
Mooney M20M · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Columbia Regional Airport (COU) to Western Neb. Rgnl/William B. Heilig Airport (BFF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05CA092
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mooney M20M
- 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
- N21816
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Regional Airport (COU), Columbia, MOTo Western Neb. Rgnl/William B. Heilig Airport (BFF), Scottsbluff, NE
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Wing › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane sustained substantial damage during recovery from a loss of control during instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) when the airplane encountered severe turbulence at 16,000 feet mean sea level (msl) and recovered at 6,000 feet msl before executing a precautionary landing. The commercial pilot reported that a thorough preflight weather briefing was obtained from the Flight Service Station (FSS). Due to severe weather reported in Kansas and Colorado, the pilot filed a route of flight that was further north through Nebraska. The pilot reported, "While in level cruise flight in IMC at 16,000' I suddenly encountered an unanticipated severe downdraft that caused a temporary loss of control of the aircraft. The plane was suddenly in a rapidly descending spiral. I was able to regain control and level off at 6,000' in VMC." The pilot executed a precautionary landing at the nearest suitable airport. While taxiing to the ramp, the right landing gear collapsed. The inspection of the airplane revealed that the right landing gear had collapsed, the wing spar was bent, and the wings were wrinkled. A representative from the airplane's manufacturer reported that the damage to the airplane indicated that the airplane experienced about 12g's of force during the recovery from the turbulence event. The airplane's storm scope was tested by a repair facility after the accident and it tested within normal specifications. There had been no pilot reports (PIREPS) along the pilot's route of flight at the time of the weather brief. A review of the air traffic control (ATC) tapes revealed that the ATC controller and the pilot did not have any communications about turbulence or severe weather prior to the upset occurring.
Probable cause
The pilot inadvertently exceeded the design limits of the airplane during the recovery from the loss of control due to the unanticipated severe turbulence. Factors to the accident were the turbulence in clouds and the main landing gear collapse.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05CA092
- Event ID
- 20050428X00524
- Case number
- CHI05CA092
- 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: f173a13dc620027029358bd9316f066ee058bbfcf65ced090d4f2981bd1ed843; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:05:53.089Z.