ERA09CA508 · Mooney 231
Mooney 231 · Accident: ground collision while taxiing
From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) to Charlottesville Albemarle Airport (CHO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA508
- 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
- 0
- 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 231
- Aircraft type
- Mooney 231
- 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
- N75PW
- Operator
- Philip M. Walker · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MDTo Charlottesville Albemarle Airport (CHO), Charlottesville, VA
- 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
- Taxi · from runway
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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
- Environmental issues › Operating environment
- 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 performed a successful landing during night visual conditions, about 30 minutes after sunset at the destination airport. He taxied off the runway onto a perpendicular taxiway, and was instructed by the ground controller to "taxi to the ramp." The pilot stated that he was "unable to make out any features on the ground," due to the darkness. He observed the Fixed Base Operator (FBO) directly in front of him and proceeded straight ahead, not realizing there was a strip of grass separating the taxiway and the FBO. The airplane exited the taxiway and continued down a grassy slope between the ramp and taxiway. During the excursion from the taxiway, the propeller and the tail of the airplane struck the ground, resulting in substantial damage. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane. He stated that the accident could have been prevented if he had studied the airport diagram and identified the grassy area.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate preflight planning and lack of familiarity with the airport diagram, which resulted in a runway excursion onto a grassy area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA508
- Event ID
- 20090909X91951
- Case number
- ERA09CA508
- 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 2009-09-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2280721e65a9eaa764ef0ed5eb01c44414fc18a1f6a7c385455c4b8560307868; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:57:03.826Z.