CEN14CA237 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Greensburg Municipal Airport (I34) to Dowling, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA237
- 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 M20F
- 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
- N343ED
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greensburg Municipal Airport (I34), Greensburg, INTo Dowling, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
The pilot reported the farm strip was aligned on a heading of approximately 090/270 and was 2,400 feet long. He was approaching from the west. As he cleared the obstacles he noticed he was descending faster than normal. He pulled the throttles to idle to land and was almost on the ground when he felt something like a wind shear. The pilot added power but as he got closer to the ground, the wind pushed the airplane toward the north side of the runway to the edge of the landing strip. As the airplane veered off the strip the wingtip collided with brush and the nose wheel broke. The pilot believed the airplane's wheels were on the ground at the time of the wind shear indicated by skid marks going sideways off the landing strip surface. The pilot obtained weather from WK Kellogg Airport (BTL) in Battle Creek, Michigan while enroute at approximately 1455. Prevailing winds were reported as 230 degrees at 10 knots. BTL reported prevailing winds from 220 degrees at 5 knots at 1753.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA237
- Event ID
- 20140513X33314
- Case number
- CEN14CA237
- 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: 1efa22d64c66a93296f68d9957a812e5a3f65c58e6c93ae612f6aa88416c8d82; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:37:11.635Z.