ERA23FA130 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident on approach
From Duluth International Airport (DLH) to Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23FA130
- 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
Cirrus Design Corp 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
- N929DR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Duluth International Airport (DLH), Duluth, MNTo Richard I Bong Memorial Airport (SUW), Superior, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2016)
- 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
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
During a short cross-country repositioning flight in day visual meteorological conditions, the airplane was about 4 miles from the destination airport, on an instrument approach at 1,300 ft mean sea level (msl), when the airplane pitched nose-down about 30° and remained in that attitude until ground impact. Review of onboard recorder data revealed that during the 1-minute period prior to manual autopilot disconnect and the final descent, the autopilot was in approach mode, using glidepath (GP) for vertical guidance and GPS for lateral guidance. With GP active, the vertical deviation slowly started to decrease until the final recorded vertical deviation was -952 ft. This would have resulted in the autopilot trimming nose-up to counteract the negative vertical deviation. After autopilot disconnected and during the final descent, the airplane’s electronic stability protection (ESP) pitch mode activated and stayed active for the descent. The ESP pitch protection mode would be activated when the airplane reached a pitch engagement limit of -15.5° nose-down and the system would then command the pitch servos to apply a supplemental stick force back toward the nominal pitch attitude range. The supplemental stick force would increase with increasing pitch deviation until the maximum limit of -20.5° nose-down pitch was reached. About 40 lbs of forward force would be required on the control stick to override both the ESP and the as-found full nose-up trim condition to maintain a 30° descent angle to impact.
The final data point indicated that the airplane was at a pressure altitude of 370 ft, an indicated airspeed of 175 knots, and descending at a vertical speed of -6,880 ft per minute. The engine speed was 2,523 rpm with 10.9 inches of manifold pressure. Examination of the wreckage and recorded data did not reveal evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. The pilot’s autopsy was limited by the severity of his injuries, and insufficient medical evidence was available to determine whether a medical condition contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
A rapid descent and subsequent collision with terrain for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23FA130
- Event ID
- 20230225106783
- Case number
- ERA23FA130
- 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: 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: 0e8c7d8582d0c309cda9e92ba0c213fdfc15da495ef2570d6478768f016362df; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:56:53.414Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. The accident occurred at Duluth, Minnesota, during a short repositioning flight to Superior, WI; DLH is Duluth International Airport in Minnesota, so "MS" is a state typo.