ERA24LA320 · Cirrus Design Corp SR20 G6
Cirrus Design Corp SR20 G6 · Accident: wrong surface or wrong airport during landing
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA24LA320
- 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 G6
- 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
- N89LF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), West Palm Beach, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2022)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Wrong surface or wrong airport
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying to a small, private airpark to pick up a colleague. As he approached the airport, he circled and descended from 2,000 ft to the left downwind leg of the traffic pattern. While on the downwind leg, the pilot spotted what he thought was the (4,061-ft-long by 48-ft-wide) runway and described that he was flying into the glare of the rising sun and morning haze. When the airplane touched down the pilot immediately realized that he would not have enough landing distance to stop and elected to abort the landing. The pilot applied power and began to climb; however, after becoming airborne, he heard a “brushing” sound that he believed was foliage at the end of the pavement. The pilot then diverted to a nearby airport and made an uneventful landing. The pilot was later informed by the owner of the airplane that he had likely landed on a paved roadway near, and oriented parallel to the intended runway. Later, the pilot learned that he had struck a powerline that spanned across the roadway. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the left wing main spar had been substantially damaged ruing the accident sequence. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to correctly identify the airport runway, which resulted in a landing on a road and contact with a power line. Contributing to the outcome was the sun glare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA24LA320
- Event ID
- 20240723194754
- Case number
- ERA24LA320
- 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: dbd70eeb8f061dd7fc26428f1319abad42390e7bdec34e57fb93763b4ce0a452; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:04:45.674Z.