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CEN23LA238 · Mooney M10

11 Jun 2023 · Gassville, AR, United States

Mooney M10 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff

From an unrecorded airport to Marion County Regional Airport (FLP)

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Event

NTSB case
CEN23LA238
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 M10

Aircraft type
Mooney M10
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
N9523V
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo Marion County Regional Airport (FLP), Flippin, AR
Aircraft age
About 54 years (built 1969)
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
Takeoff
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
Loss of control in flight
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
  • Personnel issues › Task performance

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 he and the passenger departed his home airport and flew with another airplane to a private grass strip about 5 nm to the east. They both landed and were on the ground for about an hour. They noticed a storm building in the area and prepared to leave. The north-south runway sloped up to the north and featured tall trees on the north departure end. The pilot stated that he “opted to takeoff from the north to the south even though there was a building northwest wind.” Upon rotation, he heard the airplane’s stall warning horn, so he lowered the nose to gain airspeed, but the airplane was “very mushy, and was not gaining altitude.” The pilot struggled to maintain control as the wind pushed the airplane to the east. The airplane collided with a fence and telephone pole, then continued across a road and impacted several trees before coming to a stop. The airplane sustained substantial damage to both wings, the empennage, and the fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. He added that the other airplane departed to the south without incident.

Probable cause

The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during takeoff with a quartering tailwind.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record CEN23LA238
Event ID
20230612192359
Case number
CEN23LA238
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, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-06-12.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: 77e649d1adeb29385ee3736993c90d45e7d6477cc5d970c49f5ae7ce116fe250; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:43:17.997Z.