CEN22LA118 · Mooney M20J
Aviation Partners Mooney M20J · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Castroville Municipal Airport (CVB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA118
- 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 M20J
- 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
- N201VZ
- Operator
- Aviation Partners
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Castroville Municipal Airport (CVB), Castroville, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was approaching the destination airport in dark night conditions when it collided with trees, impacted terrain, and came to rest about 500 ft before the runway threshold. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and empennage. Neither occupant could remember the events of the accident flight. A postaccident examination of the engine and airframe revealed no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Additionally, data recovered from multiple devices that contained non-volatile memory revealed no anomalies with recorded engine parameters and that all flight parameters were consistent with controlled flight.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain a proper glidepath while on the final approach segment of the traffic pattern in dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA118
- Event ID
- 20220213104631
- Case number
- CEN22LA118
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2022-02-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 53cb306dfa381e38bb032ad6f06c786491ceec7ec0cf09869804e416adefa6bf; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:57:13.364Z.