CHI99FA112 · Cirrus Design Corp. SR20
Cirrus Design Corp. SR20 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Duluth International Airport (DLH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99FA112
- 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
- 1 · 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
Cirrus Design Corp. SR20
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR20
- 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
- N115CD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Duluth International Airport (DLH), MNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Flight control system › Clearance
- Manufacturer › Facility, inadequate design
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental airplane was on a test flight when it impacted terrain following an emergency landing attempt. The airplane was certified as an experimental airplane for crew training. The airplane's aileron spring cartridge and rudder-aileron interconnect had been removed for the test flight. The airplane was loaded with ballast to provide an aft center of gravity with stall tufts attached to both wings. During the test flight, the company test pilot declared an emergency and reported a flight control problem while maneuvering. Radar data indicates that 10 seconds prior to the declaration of an emergency by the test pilot, the aircraft was in a stall phase of flight. Postaccident inspection revealed that the right aileron exhibited evidence of jamming with its wing cove/skin. In postaccident testing of a similar SR20, a manual input pilot force was applied to the side yoke control by a Cirrus Design Corporation (CDC) test pilot. A maximum load of 85 pounds was achieved by the test pilot by leaning forward and applying both hands on the side yoke control. The control input could not be held indefinitely due to muscle fatigue. During the control input, the right aileron was deflected 11 degrees with the left aileron clamped at the inboard rib. CDC test pilots were not graduates of civilian or military flight test schools. The test pilot was not equipped with a personal parachute. A gusting crosswind of approximately 16 knots was present on the selected landing runway. The airplane's maximum demonstrated crosswind component was 19 knots. All runways were available at the time of the accident. CDC was not monitoring radio communications with the accident pilot during the test flight.
Probable cause
the lack of sufficient aileron-to-wing gap clearance design. Contributing factors were the inadequate oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration of the design and manufacturing and flight test process of Cirrus Design Corporation, the location of the control yoke, the inadequate surveillance of the test flight and the test flight procedures by the Cirrus Design Corporation. The destabilizing crosswind condition that existed on the landing runway was an additional factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99FA112
- Event ID
- 20001205X00274
- Case number
- CHI99FA112
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 73fcfac7307f5c759d2c26db1f4baeca8a828d9132e1fde73fb284fe4d2fb095; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:11:25.269Z.