According to the pilot, the tower controller at the airport in New Orleans requested he “keep up the speed” and to execute a “close approach” before the landing.
During landing rollout at night, the pilot attempted to exit the runway at an excessive speed and the Mooney M20K “began to tilt to the right.”
He tried to steer the airplane back to the runway, but it exited the runway and hit a taxiway sign.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing.
Probable Cause: The pilot’s improper decision to turn the airplane from the runway onto the taxiway at an excessive speed, which resulted in a loss of directional control, runway excursion, and collision with a taxiway sign.
To download the final report. Click here. This will trigger a PDF download to your device.
This March 2020 accident report is provided by the National Transportation Safety Board. Published as an educational tool, it is intended to help pilots learn from the misfortunes of others.
I learned to fly at a controlled field. The IP that taught me put me in a situation where the correct answer to the tower was “unable”. To this day I think what Carl did was deliberate. It was a valuable lesson. The tower folks were cool about it. They resequenced me a little and everything was fine.
That is such a trap when the tower says keep your speed up (usually a jet following you) because the probability is it is something for which you didn’t previously train. The usual result is the speed is maintained too long for the desired exit taxiway and the outcome will almost certainly be damaged tires from skidding or an excursion off the runway/taxiway. Just reply ‘unable’.
Yep; all true statements & fortunately it only cost him some Bondo, duct tape, a little embarrassment, and maybe a tire or two. He does a good job ‘fessing up to the obvious: Low-time pilot flying a fast, complex, high performance plane into Class B airspace, at night, to land at an airport with notorious rush-hour jet traffic issues. What could go wrong?
There’s some ‘gotchas’ here which highlight the importance of a “thorough” approach brief, including knowing when to say “Unable” if you’re being pushed to/beyond your limits.
He’s being herded by ATC, starting with Approach Ctrl, 45 miles out, informing him to “keep up the speed” IOT accommodate other traffic. Starting to get behind already?
His decision to accept a landing on Rwy 2, albeit from a ‘close-in right base‘ is OK (I wonder what that “stabilized approach” looked like); but…I’ll bet his decision to exit at Taxiway Echo was made ‘on the fly’.
Taxiway E is only 1,000’ from the threshold. If he followed the PAPI (Rwy 2 has an ILS also) all the way to “impact”, he couldn’t have turned off there. So, he dropped below it somewhere earlier, to land safely, which is also OK, but….
His comment “I landed fairly softly which gave me the confidence to apply the brakes”, sounds like maybe he was too fast & floated a bit?
He needed to plan & execute his best night short field landing on a less-than-1,000’ runway. To me, that’s a ‘firm’ touchdown, not a greaser.
It doesn’t say how fast he was going when he tried the 90-degree turn, but I bet it was a ‘Yahoo!’ moment. His comment that he “didn’t notice nor hear the strike” kinda says it all; adrenaline will do that to you.