ERA12LA473 · Cirrus Design Corp SR-22
Cair Cirrus Design Corp SR-22 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY) to Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA473
- 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 SR-22
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR-22
- 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
- N138CK
- Operator
- Cair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cobb County International Airport-McCollum Field (RYY), Atlanta, GATo Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NC
- 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
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A few minutes after leveling the airplane at a cruise altitude of 9,000 feet mean sea level, the pilot felt the engine slightly vibrate or "wiggle." The propeller rpm then began to rise rapidly, and the pilot noted an engine oil pressure warning on the primary flight display. After unsuccessfully troubleshooting the engine problems, the pilot secured the engine and declared an emergency. An air traffic controller informed the pilot of an airport 4 miles from his location, and he turned the airplane toward that airport and prepared for an emergency landing. The pilot again unsuccessfully attempted to restart the engine and then resecured it while on the downwind leg of the airport traffic pattern. When the pilot turned the airplane toward the base leg of the traffic pattern at 1,200 feet, he added one notch of flaps, at which point, he felt the handling characteristics of the airplane change, and it began to feel "mushy." He then retracted the flaps, and the condition worsened. As the airplane descended through 1,000 feet, the pilot thought that he had "lost control of the airplane" and decided to activate the airframe emergency parachute. The parachute deployed, and, within seconds, the airplane settled into trees about 2 miles from the airport. The airplane remained suspended in the trees until emergency personnel arrived on scene and rescued the occupants.
After the accident, the presence of oil was noted on the underside of the airplane. After the airplane was recovered from the trees, examination of the oil dipstick revealed small pieces of metal in the engine oil. Examination of the engine revealed that the crankshaft was fractured and that the crankcase exhibited varying degrees of fretting and lock-slot elongation on the main bearing supports, which is consistent with the application of insufficient torque on the cylinder through-bolts by maintenance personnel. New cylinders had been installed on the engine 113 hours before the accident. Because the cylinders were loose, the oil supply at the No. 2 main journal was shut off and the crankshaft broke, which resulted in the subsequent loss of oil pressure to the engine.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to the failure of the crankshaft, which resulted from the application of insufficient torque on the cylinder through-bolts by maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA473
- Event ID
- 20120723X43615
- Case number
- ERA12LA473
- 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: f404f23e6970507e5fb0335866e5c117fa803dd6af926a9402068fefc70164fe; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:03:16.602Z.