LAX06LA298 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN) to Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06LA298
- 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 M20C
- 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
- N5577Q
- Operator
- Ronald W. Bennett · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), Auburn, CATo Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Flt control syst, elevator control cable/rod › Fatigue
- Flt control syst, elevator control cable/rod › Fractured
- Lubricant, grease › Inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Seconds after taking off, the pilot experienced a total loss of pitch control 30 to 50 feet above ground level. The airplane pitched uncontrollably upward, and the pilot aborted the climb. During the forced landing, the airplane impacted hard on the remaining available runway. An examination of the airplane's elevator control system revealed its push-pull control rod was broken in the empennage, with the fracture features indicative of fatigue. The control rod's adjacent end bearing was found seized; it would not pivot/rotate at its attachment location in the bell crank assembly. The bearing was corroded and devoid of lubrication. When the bearing seized, the attached control rod was bent and flexed repeatedly until failing in fatigue. In 1973 the FAA issued Airworthiness Directive number 73-21-01, which required recurring lubrication of all flight control systems at yearly intervals and 100 hours time in service to prevent corrosion in the flight control systems that might result in binding or seizure of the joints and loss of flight control. The accident airplane was manufactured in 1965, and its total time was 5,638 hours. Its last annual inspection had been performed 8 1/2 months and about 148 hours prior to the accident. Maintenance records indicated that the airplane had been operated 48 hours beyond the 100-hour limit without evidence of the requisite lubrication.
Probable cause
the fatigue failure of the elevator's control rod due to inadequate lubrication. Contributing factors were the inadequate maintenance and the owner-pilot's failure to comply with an airworthiness directive.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06LA298
- Event ID
- 20060923X01380
- Case number
- LAX06LA298
- 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: c6b3a30ebf54d56c79c00d258bf5458a89f8c9512fbd2aa4a6683e85eeb8bfdf; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:40:55.539Z.