CEN13FA456 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: low altitude operation/event during initial climb
From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS) to Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA456
- 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
- 2 · 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 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
- N225CD
- Operator
- Shiv Patil
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spirit of St Louis Airport (SUS), Chesterfield, MOTo Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT), Delhart, TX
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
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
The instrument-rated pilot departed with a reported cloud ceiling of 400 feet above ground level and 3 miles visibility. A witness, who was about 0.3 nautical mile (nm) west of the departure end of the runway, observed seeing the accident airplane's navigation lights for about 3 to 5 seconds as it traveled west. The airplane appeared to be traveling at a high rate of speed and in a descent. He saw a fireball as the accident airplane impacted the trees and terrain. He reported that the weather conditions were "very foggy" and that he could only see the accident airplane's navigation lights due to the fog and dark light conditions. Approach control radar data indicated that the airplane did not climb more than 200 feet above ground level before impacting the trees. The examination of the wreckage debris field indicated that the airplane was in a shallow descent at impact. The postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to establish and maintain a positive climb rate during the initial climb in night instrument meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA456
- Event ID
- 20130803X84355
- Case number
- CEN13FA456
- 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: 7500a59348b1f58f303714cccaa70e0eeb9b404d279c51bb31b321151f84aca9; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:01:47.613Z.