NYC08CA067 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Virginia Highlands Airport (VJI) to West Georgia Regional Airport / O V Gray Field (CTJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA067
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N9371M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Virginia Highlands Airport (VJI), Abingdon, VATo West Georgia Regional Airport / O V Gray Field (CTJ), Carrollton, GA
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Proper glidepath, 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
The pilot of a Mooney M20F was flying a night instrument landing system (ILS) approach and became distracted while attempting to locate and tune in the airport's common traffic advisory frequency. The airplane subsequently descended below the glideslope and impacted the ground about 1 mile from the airport. The pilot stated that he did not experience any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane. He also indicated that due to strong headwinds, he had earlier stopped at an intermediate airport, and should have stayed there, as he was fatigued at the time of the accident. The pilot reported 1,075 hours of total flight experience, which included 990 hours in make and model, and 62 hours in actual instrument meteorological conditions. Weather, reported at an airport about 35 miles to the east of the accident site, about the time of the accident, included a visibility of 1.5 miles in light drizzle and mist, and broken and overcast cloud layers at 400 and 700 feet respectively.
Probable cause
The pilot's descent below the glidepath during the approach, which resulted in a collision with terrain. Contributing factors included the pilot's diverted attention, pilot fatigue, and the night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA067
- Event ID
- 20080201X00127
- Case number
- NYC08CA067
- 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: c8c18ae741e41b20c0673c894b697c03e4609835e3014a3367b7442723acaebd; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:13:23.775Z.