SEA05LA129 · Mooney M20J

The pilot said that he had been cleared to land. He said that he was at approximately 300 feet above ground level (AGL) when the nose of his airplane pitched up approximately 15 degrees and the left wing dropped approximately 30 degrees. He said he "attempted to correct this condition with both the ailerons and rudder, with no results. It was as if the yoke was locked with a gust lock." The pilot said that he immediately checked the location of a flight bag and oxygen bottle that were on the floor in front of the front passenger 's seat to make certain that they were not interfering with the yoke or rudders, which they weren't. He said that he had been hand flying the airplane for several minutes, but he confirmed that the auto pilot was off. The pilot said that he believed that he was approaching a stall, so he increased power to full power. Soon, thereafter, he impacted the ground after approximately 160 degrees of left hand turn. A witness said that the airplane was on a 1/4 mile final with landing gear and flaps down. He said that it looked like the airplane started to go-around to the left with a high power setting. He said that when the airplane had turned approximately 180 degrees, its left wing impacted terrain and the airplane cartwheeled. Another witness said that the airplane was never more that 100 to 150 feet above the ground during this maneuver. The pilot had recently completed (June 5, 2005) a Mooney Pilot Proficiency Program, and received his FAA required flight review endorsement. He had flown the airplane approximately 31 hours during the previous 30 days. The density altitude at the time of the accident was calculated to be 7,292 feet.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset