ERA09CA387 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: landing area undershoot
From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK) to Barrow County Airport (WDR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09CA387
- 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 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
- N316SR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DeKalb Peachtree Airport (PDK), Atlanta, GATo Barrow County Airport (WDR), Winder, 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 · 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the certificated flight instructor, the purpose of the flight review was to fulfill an insurance company requirement for the pilot/owner in the left seat. The first attempted maneuver was a simulated forced landing to runway 5. The flight instructor stated that "due to minimum downwind spacing and a short base leg, the aircraft overshot the final approach" path. When he realized that the approach was not stabilized, the flight instructor "attempted to assume control of the aircraft and initiate a go-around." He also stated that as he "advanced the power it became evident that the airspeed and altitude were too low" to avoid ground contact to the left of the runway. The airplane struck terrain and two taxiway lights, continued down an embankment, and came to rest about 100 yards from the initial point of contact. The airplane sustained damage to the landing gear, vertical stabilizer, right flap, and propeller. The reported airport winds about the time of the accident were calm. The pilot did not report any mechanical anomalies with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to obtain the proper touchdown point during a practice forced landing, and the flight instructor's delayed decision to initiate a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09CA387
- Event ID
- 20090708X75247
- Case number
- ERA09CA387
- 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: d7a1bece7464d2a00f37da235074feb55ec4aafb7195a8cc87d659624970ed55; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:45:06.797Z.