ERA13LA391 · Mooney Aircraft CORP. M20C
Mooney Aircraft CORP. M20C · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Freeway Airport (W00) to Freeway Airport (W00)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA391
- 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 Aircraft CORP. 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
- N78951
- Operator
- Tivay Alireza
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Freeway Airport (W00), Mitchellville, MDTo Freeway Airport (W00), Mitchellville, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1962)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane departed from the 2,420-foot-long asphalt runway near its maximum gross weight. Review of witness statements and a video revealed that the airplane initially lifted off and climbed out of ground effect; however, it subsequently descended in a nose-up attitude into trees about 250 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the flaps were in the fully extended position and that the flap position indicator was indicating the "down" position (fully extended). No other preimpact anomalies were observed with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. The takeoff checklist indicated that the pilot should pump the hydraulically actuated flap handle twice, which would extend the flaps to a 15-degree takeoff position. If the flap handle were pumped four and one-half times, the flaps would extend to the full-down position. It is likely that the pilot repeated that checklist item twice, which would have placed the flaps at or near the fully extended position. Review of performance data revealed that adequate runway length existed for the airplane to take off if its flaps had been in the takeoff position.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that the wing flaps were properly configured before takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA391
- Event ID
- 20130903X84628
- Case number
- ERA13LA391
- 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: e1b92845301230cf88f2f9223f91531cb445d8f8e00e87c735e3636af9edb06c; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:43:14.384Z.