ERA22LA198 · Cessna 310 Q
Jupiter Flight Service and Investing Cessna 310 Q · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA198
- 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
- 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
Cessna 310 Q
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 310
- 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
- N7733Q
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Fulton County Airport Brown Field (FTY), Atlanta, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1970)
- 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 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that airplane had been painted and the rudder reinstalled before the accident flight. He stated that immediately after takeoff he noticed that he needed to use significant left rudder to maintain directional control. He executed a precautionary landing on the airport property, landing hard in the grass at a 45° angle to the runway. The fuselage sustained substantial damage and the nose landing gear fractured during the landing. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the rudder trim system was significantly out of rig. The pilot was unable to provide any maintenance records relating to the rudder removal and reinstallation. It is likely that the rudder and/or its trim system was installed incorrectly following the airplane’s repainting, which resulted in the pilot’s difficulty maintaining directional control and inability to make a normal landing on the runway. Although the pilot indicated that he performed the preflight checklist before takeoff, he stated that he may not have checked the control trims that are part of that checklist. It is likely that, had the pilot completed a preflight control check before the flight, he would have identified the improperly rigged rudder trim system.
Probable cause
The failure of maintenance personnel to properly rig the rudder trim system after reinstallation and pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection after recent maintenance, which resulted in an inability to adequately maintain directional control during the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA198
- Event ID
- 20220421104979
- Case number
- ERA22LA198
- 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: 1ff49d01ee92a0b05444f2d7d2d1637428d6296f24997b1e48e6005a1a36af84; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:09:27.499Z.