ERA24LA068 · Cirrus Design Corp SR20
SkyBlue Aviation Cirrus Design Corp SR20 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA068
- 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
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
- N875SB
- Operator
- SkyBlue Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), North Palm Beach, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident occurred during a transition training instructional flight, and the pilot receiving instruction had not previously logged any flight experience in the accident airplane make and model. The pilot receiving instruction reported that on final approach they entered a side slip to align with the runway. The airplane was stable approaching the threshold but once past the threshold the airplane started to drift to the right of the centerline. The pilot called for a go-around and controls were passed to the flight instructor. The flight instructor stated that 20-30 feet above the runway the tail began to swing from left to right and he took control of the airplane. The airplane floated over the runway for a few seconds while he used the rudder to compensate for the unexpected gust of wind. The flight instructor stated that the airplane became difficult to control before one wing contacted the runway. The tail structure separated from the fuselage and the fuselage, engine mount, and both wings were substantially damaged. The flight instructor stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to maintain control of the airplane after encountering a wind gust during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA068
- Event ID
- 20231219193542
- Case number
- ERA24LA068
- 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, 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: cb75c28f496303c9a879fe8ce9c0695a6ee5e8509bafc4cbcb3b4d23c1c61dcf; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:22:51.413Z.