GAA18CA233 · Mooney M20F
Zulu Aviation Mooney M20F · Accident: fuel starvation en route
From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW) to Bulverde Airpark (1T8)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA233
- 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
- N3535X
- Operator
- Zulu Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW), Fort Worth, TXTo Bulverde Airpark (1T8), Bulberde, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1966)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
According to the pilot who occupied the right front seat, during the flight, the engine started to run roughly. He added that, during landing, the airplane was fast and high, and it touched down about 1,200 ft past the approach end of the 2,890-ft-long runway. A pilot-rated passenger occupied the left front seat, which was the only position configured with brakes. The pilot-rated passenger applied the brakes during the landing roll, and the pilot maneuvered the airplane to exit the left side of the runway to avoid a runway overrun and impact with a fence. The airplane exited the left side of the runway, the right main landing gear collapsed, and the airplane subsequently skidded to a stop in the grass safety area.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the aft section of the fuselage.
During an interview with the National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge, a flight instructor, who was seated in the rear of the airplane during the flight, reported that the airplane touched down about 100 knots with between 40 and 60 percent of the runway remaining.
According to the manufacturer's airplane operator manual, the minimum runway landing roll distance at sea level is 785 ft when the ground speed is 70 knots.
The METAR at the airport reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 07° at 12 knots, gusting to 17 knots. The airport field elevation was 789 ft, and the pilot landed the airplane on runway 34.
Probable cause
The pilot’s unstabilized approach, which resulted in the airplane landing long and fast, and the pilot’s subsequent decision to steer the airplane off the side of the runway to avoid a runway overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA233
- Event ID
- 20180420X04415
- Case number
- GAA18CA233
- 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: e7df174e3910aada60c268c20bc8ddb89efc8c9c3086d6deed9c029a941424a8; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:53:00.287Z.