CEN22LA107 · Cirrus Design Corp SR20
Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University Cirrus Design Corp SR20 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) on approach
From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (KBTL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA107
- 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 Design Corp 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
- N42VR
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (KBTL), Battle Creek, MITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2006)
- 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 · IFR final approach
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The cross-country flight was being conducted by a flight instructor and pilot in conjunction with an instrument rating course from a Part 141 flight school. According to the flight instructor, upon reaching the decision altitude, they transitioned to a visual descent to the runway. During the descent, the airplane impacted trees and the flight instructor assumed control of the airplane and continued to the runway for landing. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, right wing, and both horizontal stabilizers.
The pilot stated that after terminating use of the view limiting device and she transitioned to visual references, she continued to glance back at the glideslope indicator, which showed that they were low on the approach. Shortly thereafter, a tree appeared in front of them, about the same time as they felt the impact. She stated that the precision approach path indicator (PAPI) would not turn on and there was not a current Notice to Air Mission (NOTAM) for the outage.
The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure adequate terrain clearance during an approach. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action when the airplane descended too low after transitioning to a visual descent to the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA107
- Event ID
- 20220125104554
- Case number
- CEN22LA107
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2022-01-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bc237d12d36751a5042841656a4f855daa9c3e67c08e8755552bed25dcdb9435; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:54:44.060Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. KBTL is W.K. Kellogg Airport at Battle Creek, Michigan, not Wisconsin; the operator on the same record is Western Michigan University.