ERA22LA020 · Mooney M20C
Mooney M20C · Accident: landing gear collapse
From Pickens County Airport (JZP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA020
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N669GJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pickens County Airport (JZP), Jasper, GATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 60 years (built 1961)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
The pilot reported that he extended the landing gear while performing a 360º turn to lose altitude on final approach and verified that it was down and locked. Upon landing, the landing gear retracted, and the airplane skidded to a stop on the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage. A witness waiting to depart stated that the landing gear was down and the airplane appeared to land harder than usual in the gusting conditions. The airplane bounced twice, and on the second bounce, while the airplane was airborne, the landing gear retracted into the up position. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed that the gear lever was in the retracted position and the landing gear functioned normally. The pilot reported that there were no pre-accident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. He stated that on a previous flight, the landing gear lever became unlatched and during all subsequent flights, he would forcefully jerk on the lever to ensure it was latched.
Probable cause
The uncommanded landing gear retraction following a hard landing for reasons that could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA020
- Event ID
- 20211019104130
- Case number
- ERA22LA020
- 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, 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: e289892842f8054819aa302879686b423a1400aa7d3245366c791061ee4d8181; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:40:55.486Z.