CEN11LA373 · Mooney M20R
Mooney M20R · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during landing
From Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (KJVL) to Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA373
- 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 M20R
- 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
- N5816P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport (KJVL), Janesville, WITo Lake in the Hills Airport (3CK), Lake In The Hills, IL
- 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
- 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
- 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
**This report was modified on July 29, 2013. Please see the docket for this accident to view the original report.**
The pilot had recently purchased the airplane and was receiving flight instruction to become more comfortable operating it. The accident occurred as the pilot performed a simulated forced landing at the end of an instructional flight. The pilot began the landing flare above the region of ground effect and unintentionally induced an aerodynamic stall after his abrupt aft control yoke input. He increased engine power in response to the stall condition, but the airplane landed hard on the main landing gear in a nose-high attitude. The airplane subsequently bounced and began to veer to the left. The pilot and flight instructor were unsuccessful in regaining control. The airplane departed the runway and went down an embankment into a construction site. The fuselage, firewall, and both wings were substantially damaged during the event. A postaccident examination did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare and recovery from a bounced landing, which resulted in a loss of control. Contributing to the accident was the certified flight instructor’s inadequate supervision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA373
- Event ID
- 20110606X22558
- Case number
- CEN11LA373
- 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: c746072901cb2c2b480852a8952a315a44742c2e46aeb0488cd030c3d2d52e65; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:15:08.541Z.