CEN10CA347 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) on approach
From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS) to Town & Country Airpark (F82)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA347
- 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 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
- N3495X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Spinks Airport (FWS), Burleson, TXTo Town & Country Airpark (F82), Lubbock, 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was landing with a headwind of 15 knots, gusting to 22 knots. When the airplane was on short final approach, at about 10 to 12 feet above the runway, the student pilot said that the airplane "fell out of the sky...and bounced on all three wheels." He then applied full power and attempted a go-around. While still airborne, the right wing of the airplane struck a tree approximately 125 feet to the left of the runway centerline. The impact with the tree sheared off the outboard three feet of the right wing and the airplane then struck level terrain and came to rest upright. There was a fuel spill, but no post-impact fire. The impacts caused substantial damage to both wings, the fuselage, engine mounts, landing gear, and tail surfaces. The student pilot reported that he was not injured. An examination of the airplane revealed no preexisting anomalies.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain control during a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA347
- Event ID
- 20100628X43705
- Case number
- CEN10CA347
- 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. 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: 0eb9dcb31cd100af7b1b2d2d9983fe1ba94f10ae5b154e2976c00ce96917f921; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:31:06.242Z.