NYC08FA138 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) during initial climb
From Front Royal Warren County Airport (FRR) to Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08FA138
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp SR22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR22
- 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
- N141SR
- Operator
- Hector K Collison · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Front Royal Warren County Airport (FRR), Front Royal, VATo Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MD
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed from runway 27 on a night instrument flight rules flight in marginal visual meteorological conditions. Rising mountainous terrain was located west of the departure airport. The pilot's first waypoint was located northeast of the airport. There was no record of the pilot previously departing the airport at night. Recorded data from the airplane's primary flight display showed that during controlled flight just prior to impact the airplane was climbing and accelerating, reaching a pressure altitude of approximately 2,200 feet mean sea level (msl) and an indicated airspeed of 140 knots. About 6 seconds before the end of the recording, the airplane began a steep descending turn to the left (roll attitude reached a peak value of 95 degrees left wing down, pitch attitude reached a peak of about 27 degrees nose down). The airplane collided with the rising terrain, about 4 miles west of the airport, at about the 1,200 msl level while on a southerly heading. Recorded weather about the time of the accident included a broken ceiling at 2,400 feet, overcast ceiling at 3,000 feet, visibility 3 miles in rain, and winds from 340 degrees at 4 knots. Examination of the airplane, airplane systems, engine, and propeller did not reveal any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from rising mountainous terrain, and his failure to turn toward his assigned course during initial climb. Contributing to the accident were the low ceiling, reduced visibility, dark night conditions, and rising mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08FA138
- Event ID
- 20080319X00332
- Case number
- NYC08FA138
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-03-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 271592ee77edf09043da9e4a9b0b16c36833b5ef23cf19bd45be268d19ebd293; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:59:16.726Z.