CEN17LA073 · Cirrus SR22
Cirrus SR22 · Accident: fuel contamination en route
From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU) to Meadow Lake Airport (FLY)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17LA073
- 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 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
- N5VK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU), Provo, UTTo Meadow Lake Airport (FLY), Colo. Springs, CO
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot stated that, shortly after reaching cruise altitude on the cross-country flight, engine cylinder head and exhaust gas temperatures displayed on the multifunction display (MFD) became erratic. Since the pilot had previously experienced trouble with the MFD sensory input unit, he reverted to monitoring the analog gauges, which were registering normal temperatures. Shortly thereafter, the engine backfired and the pilot sensed a partial loss of engine power, followed by a further decrease in power. Unable to maintain altitude and realizing he would be unable to reach any nearby airports, the pilot made a forced landing on a snow-covered plateau, resulting in substantial damage.
Postaccident examination of the airframe revealed large quantities of water in the wing tanks, which likely accumulated during the time the airplane was on the mountain before recovery and during storage. The airframe fuel gascolator contained a large amount of debris and rust. The gascolator was replaced with a surrogate unit, and a subsequent test run of the engine revealed no anomalies. It is likely that the loss of engine power was the result of fuel contamination; however, the source of the contaminants could not be determined, because fuel samples from the departure airport contained no contaminants.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power due to fuel contamination from an undetermined source.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17LA073
- Event ID
- 20170110X92555
- Case number
- CEN17LA073
- 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: a7abe7daf89776504ffd5763778e45037ca0058e52a3c58d6116125880e731b7; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:56:25.904Z.