ERA12FA438 · Cirrus Design Corp SR20
Cirrus Design Corp SR20 · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA) to Pensacola, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12FA438
- 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
- 1 · 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 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
- N764RV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA), Millington, TNTo Pensacola, 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot departed the airport in instrument meteorological conditions with no flight plan filed for the personal flight. Prior to the flight, an employee at the departure airport who talked to the pilot reported that the pilot stated he was in a "hurry to depart due to possible bad weather in the area." A review of radar data indicated that a radar target identified as the accident airplane flew for about 25 minutes after takeoff at a relatively constant altitude of about 1,000 feet mean sea level (msl). Then, the radar target began to climb at 0849:55 with intermittent descents of one to two hundred feet. The last radar return at 0852:27 indicated an altitude of 2,600 feet msl, which was in the vicinity of the accident location. Postaccident analysis of position information recovered from an enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) showed that last 10 seconds of recorded data exhibits a steadily increasing negative vertical speed rate. The last two seconds of data recorded a 5,000 foot per minute descent up to a 15,000 foot per minute descent. The roll rate of the airplane in the last 10 seconds of recorded data varied from a 24 degree roll to the right to a 28 degree roll to the left. During the final moments of the recorded flight data, ground speed peaked around 140 knots, and then decreases to 20 knots in two seconds. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions or failures. Analyses of weather information and witness statements were consistent in depicting conditions likely to have produced restricted visibility at the time of the accident. Therefore, it is likely that the restricted visibility conditions and the airplane’s turning ground track would have been conducive to the development of spatial disorientation. Subsequently, the rapid descent and steep bank angle could have resulted from the pilot losing control of the airplane due to spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The non-instrument rated pilot’s decision to continue visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in his spatial disorientation, a loss of airplane control, and subsequent impact with trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12FA438
- Event ID
- 20120711X12055
- Case number
- ERA12FA438
- 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: 63d540439a4b17747b1d0d619c8900130dc04508a58b1c93cc4276783337ae97; retrieved 2026-09-13T22:28:44.122Z.