GAA18CA224 · Mooney M20R
Mooney M20R · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Angelina County Airport (LFK) to Twin-Oaks Airport (T94)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA224
- 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 M20R
- 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
- N6868
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Angelina County Airport (LFK), Lufkin, TXTo Twin-Oaks Airport (T94), San Antonio, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2005)
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the airplane encountered a tailwind gust during landing. He reported that he frequented the airport and that it was common practice to land with a tailwind because of the preferred up-sloping runway. He asserted that he underestimated the significance of the wind conditions and that, when the airplane touched down, it was too late to abort the landing. The ground speed was too fast, and the airplane exited the departure end of the runway and collided with an embankment.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing.
The METAR at the nearest airport, 2 nautical miles from the accident site, reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 160° at 17 knots, gusting to 24 knots. The pilot landed on runway 30.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s landing long in tailwind conditions with insufficient runway remaining to stop the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA224
- Event ID
- 20180417X30712
- Case number
- GAA18CA224
- 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: 5f7d6aca77d8650ef82235f8412fd9f4289582c1dab0e303595124c3beb3b952; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:51:39.674Z.