CEN21LA009 · Mooney M20F
Mooney M20F · Accident: landing gear collapse
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA009
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N7798M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1974)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during takeoff the cabin door opened and during the climb and on raising the landing gear, he failed to receive the gear “UP” light. The passenger attempted to close the door while the pilot recycled the landing gear. The pilot reported that gear had likely not retracted based on the airplane’s failure to climb and gain airspeed as it would have, had the gear retracted. The pilot decided to return to the airport and contacted the air traffic control tower to visually assess the gear position. While maneuvering for the air traffic control tower to verify the gear, the pilot continued to cycle the gear up and down receiving no indications of a change in the gear position. The pilot reported the floorboard landing gear position indicator showed “GEAR DOWN” giving him the indication that the landing gear was down. The air traffic controller advised the pilot the gear appeared to be in the down position and cleared the airplane to land. The airplane touched down near the 1,000-foot marker on the runway on the two main wheels. A “split second” later, the right main and nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane slid off the right side of the runway impacting a runway light with the right wing. The airplane’s right wing sustained substantial damage. A postaccident examination of the landing gear showed the landing gear motor would engage for about 5 seconds and then stop leaving the landing gear in an intermediate position. A subsequent bench test of the landing gear motor resulted in the motor failing to engage or move, indicative of it being inoperative.
Probable cause
Failure of the landing gear motor that prevented the gear from extending fully to the down and locked position, which resulted in a gear collapse on landing and a subsequent loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA009
- Event ID
- 20201007102105
- Case number
- CEN21LA009
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: 5e3ca9cdcce78cc6c87422acc290138d6319026a76b41932c6baead2229b9b64; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:11:53.360Z.