CEN21LA051 · Cirrus SR22
Independence Aviation Cirrus SR22 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Colorado Air and Space Port (CFO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA051
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N418DE
- Operator
- Independence Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Colorado Air and Space Port (CFO), Front Range, COTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2019)
- 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
- Landing
- 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 control in flight
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he and student pilot were landing at their home airport following a training flight. During the planned full stop landing with a gusting crosswind, the student pilot flared high, and the airplane drifted left of runway centerline. The flight instructor called for a go-around and subsequently attempted to take control of the airplane, but the student pilot did not understand the flight instructor’s verbal commands resulting in the two pilots “fighting” over the flight controls. The airplane subsequently impacted terrain to the left of the runway and subsequently slid across a taxiway coming to rest between the taxiway and the parking apron. The airplane’s left wing and firewall sustained substantial damage. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector who examined the airplane reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the student pilot was landing the airplane on runway 17L with wind 230o at 10 to 15 knots.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during landing with a gusting crosswind and his failure to go around and relinquish control of the airplane when directed by the instructor pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA051
- Event ID
- 20201110102265
- Case number
- CEN21LA051
- 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: 77a809184a14f6a09d1678f502e39cd766d7c60d020e4989990cf4e246d6a06c; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:22:04.679Z.