ERA11LA130 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Deep South Express Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Weedon Field (EUF) to Leesburg International Airport (LEE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA130
- 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
- N8135B
- Operator
- Deep South Express
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Weedon Field (EUF), Eufaula, ALTo Leesburg International Airport (LEE), Leesburg, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane’s engine lost power during cruise flight at 9,000 feet, and the pilot declared an emergency. Air traffic control (ATC) personnel initially provided the pilot with headings to a nearby airport. However, when the pilot realized that he would not reach the intended airport, he deployed the airplane’s parachute, and the airplane came to rest upright in a field.
Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the camshaft was completely fractured due to fatigue cracks near the flange at the oiling holes. Further examination showed that the fatigue cracks initiated at the edge of the oiling holes and were caused by burrs left when the camshaft was originally manufactured. The burrs folded over during subsequent shot-peening operations, which formed laps at the corners of the holes; the laps acted to concentrate stresses at the edges of the holes and also shielded the underlying material during shot peening. The laps prevented formation of the beneficial compressive stresses that result from shot peening. This allowed subsequent formation of fatigue cracks.
The accident camshaft was determined to have been the 19th camshaft of its type manufactured. Because the camshaft was not a serialized part, specific manufacturing records could not be located. However, the quality control inspection procedures that were in place at the time the camshaft was manufactured required an inspection of the oil holes for proper de-burring. A search of FAA database revealed no similar camshaft fracture failure between 1995, and February 2012, excluding the accident event.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power resulting from the failure of the camshaft due to fatigue cracks. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate quality inspection of the camshaft after initial manufacture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA130
- Event ID
- 20110201X13318
- Case number
- ERA11LA130
- 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 2011-01-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2365efe0b6bf02f70e2a26e2b5c090f11856ee6ac903eb88af2359acfb04e6f7; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:43:48.234Z.