ERA09FA053 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From John Glenn Columbus International Airport (CMH) to Tallahassee International Airport (TLH)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09FA053
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N827GM
- Operator
- Hess, Donald A · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From John Glenn Columbus International Airport (CMH), Columbus, OHTo Tallahassee International Airport (TLH), Tallahassee, FL
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an instrument-landing-system approach in night meteorological conditions, the airplane initially joined the localizer course but subsequently veered off to the right. The controller made numerous advisory calls to the pilot to direct him back toward the localizer course; however, though the airplane initially made corrections back toward the localizer course, it subsequently turned again toward the right. Radar data indicate that the airplane continued to descend while flying a serpentine track to the right of the localizer course until it made one final turn back toward the localizer and entered a low altitude stall/spin. Immediately prior to entering the stall/spin, the pilot stated over the radio "gotta go." No mechanical anomalies were noted with the airplane and no physical anomalies were noted with the pilot. While the airplane was equipped with a parachute system that, contrary to the checklists, was not armed by the pilot before flight, the low altitude at which the pilot lost control of the airplane would have made a successful deployment doubtful even with the system armed. The pilot and a passenger were fatally injured, one person on the ground was seriously injured, and two others received minor injuries when the airplane impacted automobiles and terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed on final approach, which resulted in a low-altitude aerodynamic stall and spin. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to fly the published instrument approach and his subsequent failure to execute a timely missed approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09FA053
- Event ID
- 20081113X13150
- Case number
- ERA09FA053
- 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 2008-11-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8685784e9e6b7d73cd59f47c1a6da20ad1b1ab8dccf9637467ff2e780e3f362e; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:49:16.688Z.