NYC07CA113 · Mooney M-18L
Mooney M-18L · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Bessemer Airport (EKY) to EKY
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07CA113
- 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 M-18L
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M-18
- 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
- N119C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bessemer Airport (EKY), Bessemer, ALTo EKY
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After taking off from runway 5, the pilot of a Mooney M18-L remained in the traffic pattern to practice landings. The pilot lined up on the final approach to the runway with 10 degrees of wing flaps extended, and utilized the visual approach slope indicator to adjust his glide path. After passing over the runway end identifier lights, he then turned to line up with the grass between the runway and taxiway, to practice a soft field landing. His intent was to touchdown just past a taxiway that ran perpendicular to his flight path. As the airplane approached the perpendicular taxiway, "the plane dropped suddenly" with no change of "engine power or tone." The airplane then touched down hard, crossed the edge of the perpendicular taxiway, and the landing gear collapsed, substantially damaging the airplane. Winds about the time of the accident were 045 degrees at 8 knots gusting to 15 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control which resulted in a hard landing and subsequent gear collapse during the landing roll. A factor in the accident was wind gusts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07CA113
- Event ID
- 20070530X00666
- Case number
- NYC07CA113
- 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: 3c3342c876c353bbd87b34d57363f757c47f5b507a78a6a05228f1827e2fc153; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:51:01.611Z.