ERA22FA056 · Zenith CH601
Zenith CH601 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Massey Ranch Airpark (X50) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22FA056
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Zenith CH601
- Aircraft type
- Zenith CH601
- 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
- N22XF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Massey Ranch Airpark (X50), New Smyrna, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2021)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to radar data, after takeoff, the pilot flew for about 3 minutes at an altitude of about 200 ft above ground level before making a left turn at a ground speed of 98 knots. Shortly after the turn, the radar data ended. The wreckage was located in heavily wooded, jungle-like terrain, in the immediate vicinity of the last radar return. An on-scene examination revealed the airplane likely impacted trees then the ground in a steep nose-down attitude at a high rate of speed. There was a strong odor of aviation fuel around the impact area. All major components of the airplane were located at the accident site. The engine was buried about 2 ft into the ground and the empennage was folded forward over the cockpit area. The two-blade wooden propeller was fragmented but located in the impact crater with the engine. Examination of the airplane wreckage and engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical deficiencies that would have precluded normal operation at the time of impact. As such, it could not be determined why the airplane descended to ground impact. Toxicological testing of postmortem specimens from the pilot were positive for ethanol and n-butanol. Detection of these substances was most likely due to postmortem production (rather than consumption) and likely did not contribute to the accident.
Probable cause
A loss of airplane control while maneuvering at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22FA056
- Event ID
- 20211111104235
- Case number
- ERA22FA056
- 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, 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: cd846fb26ba2f4250b8087e7103c0c02f1dd64b26723fa255741637996206b79; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:37:11.548Z.