DFW07IA204 · Mooney M20TN
Mooney M20TN · Incident: hard landing
From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE) to Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07IA204
- 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
- Incident
- 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 M20TN
- 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
- N353TW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Metropolitan Airport (CAE), Columbia, SCTo Kerrville / Kerr County Airport at Louis Schreiner Field (ERV), Kerrville, TX
- 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
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Flt control syst, elevator trim/tab control › Reversed
- Manufacturer › Electrical system, incorrect
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the approach and landing, the nose of the airplane "was very heavy", and he was unable to keep the nose landing gear from striking the runway. An inspection of the airplane revealed that the elevator (pitch) trim control was reversed. The 2007 model airplane had a provision for the installation of an aftermarket electric trim option. This meant that the airplane was delivered to the customer without an operating electric trim system in order that the airplane could be retrofitted at a later date. Prior to its departure from the previous airport, the airplane's manual electric trim was enabled in accordance with the appropriate manufactures service bulletin. A subsequent inspection by the airplane manufacturer revealed that the wires connecting the yoke's trim control switch were incorrectly labeled. Therefore, incorporating the trim system service bulletin would reverse the direction of the pitch trim control from the pilot's input.
Probable cause
The incorrect wire labeling, resulting in the trim controls operating in the opposite direction of the pilot's input.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07IA204
- Event ID
- 20071024X01650
- Case number
- DFW07IA204
- 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: 320bb6b73b533357dc3841f6c7bd28aeedc95bc5b5b080cc3b5b550563bd385e; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:26:26.006Z.