WPR14LA343 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident during landing
From Show Low Regional Airport (KSOW) to Apple Valley Airport (KAPV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA343
- 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
- N7786M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Show Low Regional Airport (KSOW), Show Low, AZTo Apple Valley Airport (KAPV), Apple Valley, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1974)
- 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 · aborted after 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he obtained weather briefings for the cross-country flight and that, during the flight, the weather was not improving as anticipated. The visibility was above visual flight rule minimums and the ceiling was greater than 2,000 ft above ground level, but he wanted to land and obtain an updated weather briefing.
The pilot decided to land at the nearest airport. He reported that he had not landed at this airport before and did not know the runway was sloped downhill. Further, the runway was wet. When he applied the brakes during the landing roll, the airplane started to skid. He decided to go around but did not get the flaps up before the airplane travelled off the end of the runway and impacted terrain, which resulted in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Thus, it is likely that the pilot failed to maintain control of the airplane during the landing roll and then made the decision to go around before the airplane was configured for takeoff.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during the landing roll on a wet sloping runway and his decision to go around before the airplane was configured for takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA343
- Event ID
- 20140813X21542
- Case number
- WPR14LA343
- 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: ff96b5159839a22caf6eb442f88e7f20e3b7c62df1e301c69c368f2d1ced043e; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:38:08.487Z.