NYC07FA159 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Harrisburg-Raleigh Airport (HSB) to Blue Lick Airport (07KY)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07FA159
- 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 M20F
- 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
- N9180V
- Operator
- Leonard D. Watts · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harrisburg-Raleigh Airport (HSB), Harrisburg, ILTo Blue Lick Airport (07KY), Louisville, KY
- 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 · aborted
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of a Mooney M20F, with three passengers onboard, attempted to land on a 2,150-foot turf strip with trees at both ends. During the landing, the airplane touched down fast and the pilot aborted the landing. He then joined the traffic pattern for a second attempted landing. During the second landing, the airplane touched down 506 feet down the runway and the pilot aborted the landing again. A passenger could see the tops of the trees and then heard the engine increase in power. During this time the airplane was observed in a nose-high attitude. Moments later it impacted the ground in a nose-low attitude and tumbled before coming to rest. The investigation revealed that the airplane had landed at the wrong airport (the destination airport runway was 150 feet shorter, and also had trees at both ends of the runway), had been overweight prior to departing, and was most likely over its maximum allowable operating weight while landing. The investigation also revealed that a passenger seatbelt had not been secured properly. During the impact sequence, an attachment fitting had detached, releasing the occupant from their seat restraint.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the aborted landing. Contributing to the accident was the exceedance of the airplane's maximum gross weight, and the pilot's inadequate preflight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07FA159
- Event ID
- 20070718X00957
- Case number
- NYC07FA159
- 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. 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: 98f574d8eb4c9d1d5be2d7457ed30edd0e3f9a9226bef35fe8bea432f91fb497; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:30:18.383Z.