CEN11FA124 · Mooney M20E
Mooney M20E · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP) to City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11FA124
- 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
- 2 · 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 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
- N79869
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City Regional Airport (RAP), Rapid City, SDTo City of Colorado Springs Municipal Airport (COS), Colorado Springs, CO
- 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 · IFR missed approach
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial phase of an instrument approach to the destination airport, the airplane was in visual meteorological conditions above clouds that contained reported icing conditions. Prior to and during the approach, the air traffic controller, who was vectoring the airplane, advised the pilot of two pilot reports of icing conditions encountered immediately after departure. The airplane entered the clouds at 8,500 feet and reported a missed approach several feet above the decision altitude; the pilot did not report any problems or declare an emergency. No further radio communications were recorded. The wreckage was located on the airport, about 440 feet south of the approach end of the runway. The ground scars and damage to the airplane were consistent with a low-airspeed and high-angle-of-attack impact. Instrument flight rules (IFR) conditions existed over the area with conditions favorable for icing below 8,500 feet. AIRMET advisories for IFR, mountain obscuration, turbulence, and icing conditions had been issued. At the time of the accident, visibility was reported as less than 1/4 mile in freezing fog, with a ceiling at 100 feet. The approach minimums were 200-foot ceilings and 1/2 mile visibility. The airplane was not equipped with anti-icing or deicing equipment and was not approved for flight in known icing conditions.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to initiate an approach into weather conditions where the ceiling and visibility were below the minimums for the approach and where reported icing existed, in an airplane not certified for flight in icing conditions, and his failure to maintain control of the airplane during the missed approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11FA124
- Event ID
- 20101222X54546
- Case number
- CEN11FA124
- 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: c95996a0e76ea53187a2ba590ab1fe630228c0b988d48eeecc1959120180533c; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:11:27.263Z.