CEN19LA133 · Cirrus SR20
Arrive Aviation Cirrus SR20 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft on approach
From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW) to Parker County Airport (WEA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19LA133
- 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 SR20
- Aircraft type
- Cirrus SR20
- 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
- N8160C
- Operator
- Arrive Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW), Fort Worth, TXTo Parker County Airport (WEA), Weatherford, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 16 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a personal flight in the airport traffic pattern when he felt the airplane “shudder” shortly before the turn onto the base leg for the runway. The pilot and passenger then saw the right aileron “fluttering,” and the pilot immediately turned to intercept the final approach. The right aileron separated from the wing about 0.5 mile from the approach end of the runway. The pilot was able to maintain roll control of the airplane after the right aileron separated, and he completed an uneventful landing on the runway.
Examination of the airplane and the recovered right aileron revealed that the aileron’s inboard hinge bolt was not threaded into its nut plate. The safety wire that normally secured the inboard hinge bolt was found fractured. The safety wire had been excessively twisted when the right aileron was installed; the excessive twisting led to the torsional overstress fracture of the safety wire during the accident flight. Additionally, the nut plate had significantly reduced thread-locking abilities that allowed the unsecured inboard hinge bolt to loosen; the right aileron separated from the wing when the inboard hinge bolt disengaged from the nut plate. Although the inboard hinge bolt assembly included a slightly longer bolt than specified and an additional small washer, these component discrepancies did not contribute to the aileron separation.
The airplane had accumulated about 733 flight hours during the more than 10 years since the right aileron was last removed and reinstalled during maintenance. The most recent maintenance performed on the airplane was an annual inspection completed about 15.2 flight hours before the accident. The mechanic who performed the last annual inspection observed safety wire installed on the aileron hinge bolts.
Probable cause
The in-flight separation of the right aileron when the inboard hinge bolt disengaged from its nut plate due to excessively twisted safety wire, which resulted in a torsional overstress fracture that caused the inboard hinge bolt to become unsecured.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19LA133
- Event ID
- 20190503X60852
- Case number
- CEN19LA133
- 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, cause areas. 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: 9fd60165ff320c8c11960262dc593a41c4a43973991ec3176ff55e57a225b364; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:53:11.345Z.