WPR11FA335 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Afton Municipal Airport (AFO) to Simpson Airport (ID62)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11FA335
- 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
- 3 · 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 M20C
- 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
- N6855N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Afton Municipal Airport (AFO), Afton, WYTo Simpson Airport (ID62), Grace, ID
- 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 pattern final
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses in the area observed the airplane make a slight right bank turn followed by a left bank turn toward the runway. The left bank increased to about 45 degrees, before the airplane “dropped” to the ground. Data extracted from the on-board GPS unit indicated that the pilot overshot the extended runway centerline while on the base leg then made a tight left turn back toward the centerline. The airplane impacted the ground, coming to rest less than 1 mile from the approach end of the runway. Given the witness statements and the GPS track, it is likely that the pilot overcorrected the airplane’s course by making a steep turn at low speed, which led to a stall. A postaccident examination of the engine, airframe, and related systems revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain aircraft control while maneuvering in the traffic pattern, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11FA335
- Event ID
- 20110718X20352
- Case number
- WPR11FA335
- 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: 12eb0243e910937d6673b8e6029044632d8195c3fe7244307b02248c84fd18d2; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:35:27.699Z.