WPR24LA106 · Cirrus Design Corp SR22
Cirrus Design Corp SR22 · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Shelter Cove Airport (0Q5) to Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (KSTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA106
- 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 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
- N2824M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shelter Cove Airport (0Q5), Shelter Cove, CATo Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (KSTS), Santa Rosa, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2004)
- 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
- Fuel contamination
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he had not flown the airplane frequently in the months leading up to the accident. On the day of the accident flight, he conducted a preflight inspection of the airplane, including a visual inspection of the fuel level, and determined there was sufficient fuel on board for the flight. However, he did not recall if a fuel sample was taken. During the initial climb, the engine initially sputtered and then lost total power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine but without success; he deployed the airplane’s emergency parachute. The airplane impacted trees and subsequently came to rest on the ground inverted.
Aircraft recovery personnel reported that fuel was leaking from the airplane, and they recovered about 26 gallons of fuel from the left wing. No fuel was recovered from the right wing.
Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation. The fuel manifold assembly was removed and disassembled, and a liquid substance was noted. The liquid substance was tested for water using SAR-GEL, a water-finding paste; it tested positive for water. It is likely the total loss of engine power was a result of water in the airplane’s fuel system. It could not be determined how or when the water entered the airplane’s fuel system.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to water-contaminated fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA106
- Event ID
- 20240311193914
- Case number
- WPR24LA106
- 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, 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: 304c0a8ab82c51d9fc4947949ee9e9b0057f331ddfde6d85dbdc9606c0a1a7fe; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:34:54.952Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Wrong state; STS is Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport at Santa Rosa, California, on the flight's California route.