ERA23FA258 · Cirrus SR22 T
Cirrus SR22 T · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to CYKF · Waterloo, WI
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23FA258
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- 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 T
- 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
- C-GNMT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo CYKF · Waterloo, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2018)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- 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 day before the accident, the pilot and the flight instructor brought the airplane to a maintenance facility due to a low engine manifold air pressure (MAP) indication. The owner of the maintenance facility adjusted the MAP via a set screw on the bottom of the slope controller (turbocharger controller), while the instructor performed ground runs to verify it. The instructor then took a facility maintenance technician on a 30-minute post-maintenance flight. There were no anomalies noted during that flight.
On the day of the accident, the pilot and instructor flew a cross-country flight to the destination airport. Recorded data indicated that, during the flight, the MAP momentarily exceeded the maximum value of 37.5 in (37.59 in) for 1 second, which activated a red crew alerting system (CAS) message visual warning; however, there were no further exceedances during the flight. After conducting business at the destination, the pilot and instructor boarded the airplane for the return flight. They conducted one uneventful touch-and-go landing when, following the second touch-and-go, about midfield at 200 ft above ground level, the MAP exceeded 38.5 in (39.91 in), which activated an aural CAS warning, and the fuel flow exceeded 41 gph (49.5 gph); however, the engine’s fuel-to-air ratio remained sufficient, and the engine continued to operate. The airplane subsequently pitched up 13° and rolled left 67° just before the Cirrus Aircraft Parachute System (CAPS) was deployed about 293 ft above ground level, which was too low to allow for full deployment of the parachute system. The airplane impacted terrain and was consumed by a postimpact fire.
Subsequent examination of the slope controller did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions; however, it sustained heat damage due to a postcrash fire and its gasket rubber diaphragm were destroyed consistent with heat damage. Examination of the remainder of wreckage also did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions. Based on the evidence, the pilot(s) likely overreacted to a distracting anomaly in the cockpit (exceedance of MAP, resulting in an aural cockpit CAS warning), lost control of the airplane, and deployed the CAPS at altitude that was insufficient for it to be effective.
Probable cause
The pilots’ failure to maintain airplane control following an anomalous engine indication during the initial climb, which resulted in a loss of control and parachute deployment at an altitude too low for the system to operate effectively. Contributing to the accident was an exceedance of engine manifold air pressure 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 ERA23FA258
- Event ID
- 20230606192324
- Case number
- ERA23FA258
- 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: f890a0c42d4ad987e51c567b6b13b3a2ab2598fc98c7efe3a85fb32e5c1e667d; retrieved 2026-09-15T08:00:58.846Z.