CHI07FA048 · Mooney M-20F
Mooney M-20F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Knox County Airport (4I3) to 4I3
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07FA048
- 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
- 2 · 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 M-20F
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M-20
- 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
- N9596M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Knox County Airport (4I3), Mt. Vernon, OHTo 4I3
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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; 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Supervision, inadequate
- Flightcrew › Remedial action, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was for the PIC/aircraft owner to receive familarization training from a certified flight instructor (CFI) in his newly purchased airplane. The PIC was a recently retired airline pilot and had not flown general aviation airplanes for a number of years. Witnesses reported hearing the aircraft engine and seeing the airplane descending straight into the trees. One witness reported the airplane went "straight up or tried to" prior to descending. Another witness reported seeing the airplane "twist" a little prior to it descending. The accident site was in a heavily wooded area which was surrounded by open fields. The airplane impacted the terrain in a nose down attitude and the only trees observed to have been damaged were those immediately surrounding the impact site. The landing gear and flaps were observed in the extended position. Inspection of the airplane and engine failed to reveal any mechanical failure/malfunction which would have precluded normal operation of the airplane. Radar data indicated that during the last 26 minutes of the flight, the airplane had been maneuvering with changes in heading, altitude, and groundspeed indicative of stalls and/or slow flight. The groundspeed, based on the radar data, varied from 164 knots to 39 knots. Just prior to the loss of radar contact, the ground speed based on the radar data was approximately 54 knots. According to the aircraft manufacturer the aircraft stall speeds, at a gross weight of 2,740 pounds, with flaps retracted is 68 miles per hour (mph) or 59 knots. With flaps set at 15 degrees the stall speed is 64 mph or 55 knots, and with flaps fully extended the stall speed is 62 mph or 54 knots. The speeds provided do not take into consideration the position of the landing gear.
Probable cause
Both the pilot-in-command/aircraft owner and the flight instructor failed to recover from the stall and the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight. Contributing to the accident was the failure to maintain stall speed which resulted in the subsequent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07FA048
- Event ID
- 20070103X00005
- Case number
- CHI07FA048
- 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: c8984988315ebe99548c023d2c062b71475ae227ce50b2742cf84a607a2a55b9; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:56:11.294Z.