CEN24LA234 · Mooney M20J
Mooney M20J · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From Morristown Regional Airport (MOR) to Ava Bill Martin Memorial Airport (AOV)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA234
- 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
- N123WJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morristown Regional Airport (MOR), Morristown, TNTo Ava Bill Martin Memorial Airport (AOV), Ava, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1987)
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 pilot reported that after landing, he moved the throttle to idle; however, the engine speed remained at 1,550 rpm. After verifying that the throttle friction lock was fully released, he decided to move the mixture control to idle/cutoff to stop the engine. The airplane subsequently went off the end of the runway and impacted some bushes. The left wing separated at the wing root during the impact sequence. He noted that a throttle linkage issue may have prevented the engine from reducing to idle power. An examination conducted by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector confirmed throttle control continuity from the cockpit to the fuel servo, and that the fuel servo throttle arm rotated smoothly from stop to stop. Additionally, the left and right wheel brakes appeared to be leaking, and the pads were worn below minimums. In a supplemental statement, the pilot noted that the brakes were functional but required more pressure than normal. He added that there was no issue holding the airplane in place during the before takeoff engine runup. The airplane pilot operating handbook (POH) specified an engine speed of 1,900 – 2,000 rpm for the before takeoff engine runup. Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) data depicted the airplane approaching to land on an extended final. The final data point was located about 0.5 miles from the runway. At that time, the airplane groundspeed was about 108 knots. Additionally, a left quartering tailwind prevailed which provided a 3-knot tailwind component to the landing runway. The airplane POH specified a final approach airspeed of 71 knots. There was no evidence of an anomaly with respect to the throttle linkage. However, there was evidence that the wheel brakes were likely not performing at an optimal level. The brakes in combination with the airplane inertia during landing likely resulted in the runway excursion.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane resulting in a runway excursion during landing. Contributing to the accident was the degraded brake system on the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA234
- Event ID
- 20240621194521
- Case number
- CEN24LA234
- 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 2024-06-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: abf3b2e052dfe020b8298473fe407d4a5e1f3635e08949b557955025c3416e52; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:56:57.438Z.