ERA09CA007 · Cirrus Design Corp SR20
Cirrus Design Corp SR20 · Accident: landing area undershoot
From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK) to Chester Airport (SNC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA007
- 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
- 0 · 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 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
- N889LD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chesapeake Regional Airport (CPK), Chesapeake, VATo Chester Airport (SNC), Chester, CT
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Landing area undershoot
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident flight was the first time the pilot was landing at the privately owned, publicly used airport, with non-standard runway lighting. The pilot was concerned with the runway length and steep drop-off at the end of the runways. The landing runway was 2,566 feet long, 50 feet wide, and was not equipped with a visual slope indicator. Upon his approach to the destination airport, the pilot noted that the runway lights were dim. The night was especially dark for the pilot, limiting his visual cues. The pilot landed hard, on up-sloping terrain, 6 feet short of where the runway’s pavement began. Both main landing gear brake system were damaged in the process. The pilot was not able to brake or steer the airplane. The airplane veered off to the left, went through a fiberglass fence, and down an embankment before coming to a stop into several pine trees.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to obtain the proper touchdown point while landing. Contributing to the accident were the pilot’s inexperience landing at the airport, night conditions, and non-standard runway lighting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA007
- Event ID
- 20081008X94622
- Case number
- ERA09CA007
- 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: investigation status, coordinates. 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: 2d461e1aeaca8379f75ca62b3a803d571a312bd0e64ef65d60a609009d222426; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:26:39.079Z.