CEN13CA144 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Dupont-Lapeer Airport (D95) to Warsaw Municipal Airport (ASW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13CA144
- 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 M20J
- 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
- N5763H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dupont-Lapeer Airport (D95), Lapeer, MITo Warsaw Municipal Airport (ASW), Warsaw, IN
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while approaching the airport for landing, he entered a left downwind leg for the traffic pattern and then “allowed” the wind to push the airplane too close to the runway, which he overshot on final approach. The airplane was not aligned with the runway when it “hit the ground hard and bounced.” The airplane began to porpoise and bounced several more times as it departed the left side of the runway. The pilot attempted a go-around; however, he never regained control of the airplane. The right wingtip impacted an airport fuel storage facility about 350 feet left of the runway, and the airplane came to rest upright about 50 feet from the initial impact. Significant fuel spilled, but no postimpact fire ensued. The impact resulted in the collapse of the landing gear and substantial damage to the engine mount, firewall, fuselage, and both wings. The pilot reported that he had become complacent after flying this airplane for 6 years, that he was unprepared for the violent bouncing from the hard landing, and that he should have had better training to prepare him for the stress, confusion, and surprise that resulted. The pilot also reported no mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper recovery from a bounced landing and failure to maintain control of the airplane during a go-around maneuver. Contributing to the accident were the pilot’s complacency flying the airplane and his lack of training on bounced landing recovery procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13CA144
- Event ID
- 20130128X11622
- Case number
- CEN13CA144
- 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: 33c49de2994b4e6f171d601ac8ec2fcd5261390e9a505deab40e1ca6361ad6d0; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:50:22.385Z.