ERA20CA171 · Mooney M20K
Mooney M20K · Accident: landing gear collapse
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA171
- 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
- N231DW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GATo Athens Ben Epps Airport (AHN), Athens, GA
- 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
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, while on approach, he lowered the airplane's landing gear and confirmed that the landing gear was down and locked by observing the panel and floor indicators in the cockpit; however, during the subsequent landing roll, the left main landing gear collapsed. The airplane veered off the left side of the runway into a ditch. Examination of the airplane revealed that the left wingtip spar was buckled, and the torque tubing associated with the left main landing gear was bent and broken. Review of the logbook records did not reveal any recent maintenance on the landing gear system. Due to the damage of the landing gear assembly, a landing gear retraction test or rigging check could not be performed.
Probable cause
The collapse of the left main landing gear for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA171
- Event ID
- 20200507X24619
- Case number
- ERA20CA171
- 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: f68d640daa5d8ca853156277b76c5d0acae2b4692f04bce660d2dbe8fbd54797; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:33:34.152Z.