ERA09CA268 · Diamond DA20 C1
Savannah Aviation Diamond DA20 C1 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV) to Eagle Neck Airport (1GA0)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA268
- 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
Diamond DA20 C1
- Aircraft type
- Diamond DA20
- 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
- N561CS
- Operator
- Savannah Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Savannah Hilton Head International Airport (SAV), Savannah, GATo Eagle Neck Airport (1GA0), Townsend, GA
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane impacted a tree as the pilot was performing an aborted landing during his second attempt to land on Runway 2. The pilot reported encountering turbulence while en route and on approach. The recorded wind at an airport located 19 nautical miles northwest of the accident airport, about the time of the accident, was from 140 degrees at 8 knots. Runway 2 was 3,475 feet long, 41 feet wide, and was surrounded by trees. Winds at the airport were from the east at approximately 10 knots, as estimated by the pilot, and during the landing roll the airplane veered west of the runway centerline. The pilot applied right rudder; however, he was unable to correct for the drift. He subsequently added power to perform another aborted landing, but the airplane continued to track west and impacted a tree. The airplane received substantial damage to the horizontal stabilizer and the rear empennage sheared off from the fuselage. The pilot did not report any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. He reported 169 hours of total flight experience; of which, 3 hours were in the accident airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during a landing roll with a crosswind. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in the make and model airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA268
- Event ID
- 20090427X33337
- Case number
- ERA09CA268
- 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. 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: 5fc2d89cc2adb304096b0b000c51389b8d9d2028e79f7803ba6717bf36d750ea; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:59:22.983Z.