CEN13FA101 · Cessna 501
Makaira Aircraft Sales Cessna 501 · Accident: inflight upset during initial climb
From Detroit Lakes Airport (DTL) to Bessemer Airport (EKY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA101
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna 501
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 501
- 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
- N212M
- Operator
- Makaira Aircraft Sales
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Detroit Lakes Airport (DTL), Detroit Lakes, MNTo Bessemer Airport (EKY), Bessemer, AL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Inflight upset
- 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 systems
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While climbing on a night, instrument departure, with the autopilot most likely engaged, the airplane entered into an unusual attitude. Although both pilots recalled a left climbing turn that transitioned into a left descending spiral, air traffic control radar information indicated a right climbing turn that transitioned into a right descending spiral. Both pilots stated that their attention had been focused away from the attitude indicators during the time immediately before the unusual attitude began. The pilot-in-command disconnected the autopilot and recovered the airplane by referencing the standby instruments. During the recovery, as the pilot pulled up from the nose-low attitude, both wings sustained structural damage.
Examination of the airplane revealed that the nose radome quick release latches were not water tight and that gaps in these latches allowed precipitation to enter the forward avionics bay. Although, avionics testing did not reveal any anomalies consistent with an uncommanded flight maneuver by the autopilot, moisture conditions were not introduced during any of the tests. While it is possible that the moisture caused a malfunction of the avionics, it could not be definitively determined.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane control due to an undetermined avionics malfunction and the pilots’ inattention, which resulted in excessive airframe forces during the unusual attitude recovery. The reason for the avionics malfunction could not be determined because postaccident testing did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA101
- Event ID
- 20121214X03022
- Case number
- CEN13FA101
- 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 2012-12-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a3e71db7954efa4aa5de33119de55741fabf1965f7f9ce3f7bbfceaa96f382ab; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:34:53.307Z.