NYC06CA006 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Sky Acres Airport (44N) to Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport (ITH)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC06CA006
- 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 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
- N1163A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sky Acres Airport (44N), Millbrook, NYTo Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport (ITH), Ithaca, NY
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 object
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › IFR procedure, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While on a VOR approach, the pilot reported to the control tower that he was 3.5 miles from the airport. Shortly thereafter, the pilot saw the tops of trees about 50 feet in front of the airplane. Without sufficient time to arrest the descent, the airplane impacted trees and the ground resulting in substantial damage. The pilot additionally stated, "I can not really explain why I let the airplane descend too low. I felt comfortable with the approach throughout. I simply was too low, too far away from [the] airport."
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to comply with the published instrument approach procedure, which resulted in an in-flight collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC06CA006
- Event ID
- 20051026X01736
- Case number
- NYC06CA006
- 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: 3164003f2be07307ec18d58c5bffb28488e78c40da15efce0a9df5d5853cde50; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:53:00.582Z.