CEN09CA058 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: landing gear not configured
From San Geronimo Airpark (8T8) to Cushing Municipal Airport (KCUH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA058
- 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 M20E
- 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
- N1264X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Geronimo Airpark (8T8), San Antonio, TXTo Cushing Municipal Airport (KCUH), Cushing, OK
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Landing gear not configured
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 was returning to land at the non-towered airport after aborting a cross country flight because of deteriorating weather conditions. The pilot said he was focused on the proper glide path during the final approach and that he forgot to lower the landing gear. The airplane slid to a stop on the runway with the landing gear still retracted. There were no injuries to the solo pilot on board, but substantial structural damage to the belly of the fuselage.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to lower the gear before landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to complete the before landing checklist.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA058
- Event ID
- 20081113X42310
- Case number
- CEN09CA058
- 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: 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: 647bbb9ae0edf6eedfcd0b5fc603cc70059ce1564971e8a599278c63dd5f0032; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:32:49.872Z.