LAX08FA068 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
From Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL) to Corona Municipal Airport (AJO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08FA068
- 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
- 3 · 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 M20C
- 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
- N591BB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, CATo Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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, who had recently purchased a half share of the airplane, and two passengers were on a local area flight and had stopped at the airport for dinner. The accident occurred as the flight was departing to return to their home airport. A witness reported that once airborne the airplane was "porpoising" up and down as it flew towards him. As the airplane neared the end of the runway, he saw it make a steep climbing left turn. The airplane then rolled inverted and descended towards the ground in a near-vertical nose-down attitude. The airplane impacted a palm tree and a vehicle that was parked on the residential street located just south of the airport. After the airplane impacted the ground, the witness saw an explosion and a fire ball. A postcrash fire largely consumed the wreckage. An examination of the engine showed no discrepancies that would have precluded power from being developed prior to impact. There was no evidence of structural, powerplant, or systems failure. All of the airplane's primary structure and flight controls were accounted for at the accident site. Primary flight control system continuity was established. The fuel selector valve was selected on the left tank. Flaps and landing gear were retracted and the tail trim was measured and found to be set for takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed and aircraft control, resulting in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08FA068
- Event ID
- 20080305X00271
- Case number
- LAX08FA068
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-02-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2ae9d7aa3c30cbef96d56caad19d1f25b01150c431350e79ae7bc220e34d2ada; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:57:48.794Z.