CEN20CA115 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM) to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA115
- 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 M20K
- 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
- N3928H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mobile Downtown Airport (BFM), Mobile, ALTo Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), New Orleans, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1979)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the air traffic tower controller requested that he "keep up the speed" and execute a "close approach" before landing. During the landing roll at night, the pilot attempted to exit the runway at an excessive speed, and the airplane "began to tilt to the right." He tried to steer the airplane back to the runway, but the airplane exited the runway and impacted a taxiway sign. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to turn the airplane from the runway onto the taxiway at an excessive speed, which resulted in a loss of directional control, runway excursion, and collision with a taxiway sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA115
- Event ID
- 20200307X03728
- Case number
- CEN20CA115
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-03-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3548d2baf2deb00b4cc017e4041e33b33f5076efd6be4769df8b644659fd63b6; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:15:50.161Z.