ANC18LA004 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22T
Cirrus Design Corp SR22T · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Moton Field Municipal Airport (06A) to Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC18LA004
- 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 SR22T
- 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
- N289CM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moton Field Municipal Airport (06A), Tuskegee, ALTo Millington-Memphis Airport (NQA), Millington, TN
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that shortly after takeoff, during the initial climb, he sensed the airplane slow down and the climb rate diminish. A witness reported seeing grey smoke being emitted from the airplane's exhaust. Realizing that the engine had lost partial power, the pilot chose a sod field as an off-airport landing site. During the forced landing, the airplane's landing gear collapsed, and the airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage.
A postaccident examination, which included an engine run, revealed that when the throttle was advanced through a manifold pressure of about 36 inches of mercury (inHg), the fuel flow exceeded the engine manufacturer's full throttle high-side limit. Continued movement of the throttle resulted in a manifold pressure of about 39 inHg before the engine began experiencing fuel flows that were too excessive to support combustion. The slope controller was adjusted to reduce manifold pressure to that specified by Cirrus, and the engine test run continued with high fuel flows. After the manifold pressure adjustment, the engine throttle was rapidly advanced multiple times from idle to full throttle without any hesitation, stumbling, or interruption in power.
Thus, it is likely that the improperly adjusted slope controller and fuel pump resulted in an excessively high fuel flow, an extremely rich mixture, a rough-running engine, and a partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
An improperly adjusted slope controller and fuel pump that resulted in an excessively high fuel flow, an extremely rich mixture, a rough-running engine, and a subsequent partial loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC18LA004
- Event ID
- 20171016X74852
- Case number
- ANC18LA004
- 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: a6e31374fc97f2ec71b3533388a0d80e8ed3176d602ac90f312397b9a33f9fd1; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:56:25.480Z.