WPR20CA276 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: turbulence encounter on approach
From McMinnville Municipal Airport (MMV) to Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20CA276
- 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 M20C
- 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
- N2933L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McMinnville Municipal Airport (MMV), McMinnville, ORTo Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3), Hillsboro, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 53 years (built 1967)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Turbulence encounter
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that the pilot receiving instruction was able to maintain an approximately 3° glide path on final approach to land, with power at an intermediate setting. However, on short final the airplane began to sink. The instructor stated that initially the pilot receiving instruction appeared to be adequately correcting, adding power, and increasing pitch. However, less than 100 ft above the touchdown zone and right before the flight instructor was about to command a go-around, the airplane sank further and touched down just prior to the runway. The right main landing gear impacted the edge of the runway and collapsed, substantially damaging the right wing.
The flight instructor reported that there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain altitude on short final due to an encounter with a down draft and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20CA276
- Event ID
- 20200819X92718
- Case number
- WPR20CA276
- 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 2020-08-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8c05f38f8e6edbd21e59f3fe19b485ef6c4d2dc007be31b860ee7ea0b503b508; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:51:24.142Z.