CEN24LA230 · Cirrus Design Corp SR20
Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University Cirrus Design Corp SR20 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL) to Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA230
- 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
- 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 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
- N154WF
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL), Battle Creek, MITo Battle Creek Executive Airport at Kellogg Field (BTL), Battle Creek, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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
While practicing power-off stalls during an instructional flight, the student pilot was flying when the airplane entered a spin to the right. The flight instructor attempted remedial action but was unable to recover from the spin. The flight instructor pulled the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) handle about 2,800 ft msl. The CAPS system deployed the parachute, and the airplane descended to the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the composite fuselage from the firewall aft to the CAPS rocket/parachute exit area, and the rudder spar. There were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s loss of control and the flight instructor’s delayed remedial reaction which resulted in a spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA230
- Event ID
- 20240620194505
- Case number
- CEN24LA230
- 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: 3b67efab0a6c89bad25d0c20c808d231a329f5ab7a1a5d6acb40b69ff7b00707; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:56:29.281Z.