On March 20, 2025, a Cirrus SR22 crashed in LaFayette, Georgia, during a training flight, killing both the pilot and flight instructor.
It was a good day of flying, good visibility, scattered clouds at 4300 feet with light wind. Both the pilot and the flight instructor had a day off and agreed to go flying. The pilot had 379 hours, 310 of them in the Cirrus SR22, and had received some training to obtain his Commercial Pilot Certificate. He had previously trained with this flight instructor to obtain his commercial certificate and previously for his instrument training. A friend commented that the purpose of that day was simply to fly together, although the friend also assumed it was instruction, since the pilot “wouldn’t miss the opportunity to hone his skills,” he said.
That afternoon, the pilot flew the Cirrus SR22, registered in the US as N969SS, to Barwick LaFayette Airport to pick up the flight instructor.
At 2:15 p.m., the meteorological observation indicated a wind of 260° at 7 knots: for runway 20, the wind was 3.5 kt in the head and 6.1 kt in the cross component. They took off from runway 20 at 2:19 p.m. and began flying in circuits, following a pattern to return to the runway for practice approaches and landings.
Onboard avionics data showed that they were practicing 180° shutdown precision approaches. For a no-power approach, the pilot cuts power at idle and has to slide the plane down to land at a specific location, measuring altitude, pitch, and airspeed to correct the approach without using the engine. The 180° unpowered approach begins on the downwind leg, flying parallel to the runway. The pilot must fly over the runway and turn 90° towards the base section of the circuit and then another 90° turn for the final approach, landing at a specific point on the runway.
This is a required skill test for the business certificate.
They completed two circuits over the course of ten minutes. During that time, the wind was changing. At the next observation, five minutes after the accident, the wind had changed to 330° at 10 knots, now a 6.4 kt tailwind with a 7.7 kt crosswind. Not enough to cause a problem, but unstable enough to change the characteristics of the accesses between circuits, making maneuvering a little difficult.
The aircraft’s avionics showed that the SR22’s pitch began to increase while they were on a steep left bank, turning toward final approach. The air speed began to decrease.
A man working nearby was watching.
I walked out the front door of our wastewater treatment plant office at 2:30 pm on Thursday 3/20/25 just as a small plane passed overhead. The plane was flying noticeably lower and on a different trajectory toward our runway than the planes I normally see landing here. The runway runs north to south and is directly across Spring Creek in reference to our office building.
The plane was flying directly west while overhead and banked sharply to the south as it crossed the creek. It appeared that the nose was a little higher than the tail, and that it had passed the west side of the strip. As I watched him try to line up on the strip, I felt a noticeable gust of wind from the east. As I moved south my view was blocked by trees along the banks of Spring Creek, but just before I lost sight of it the wings seemed to dip sharply in the other direction as if the wind was pushing them in that direction. Immediately afterward there was a huge explosion and a fireball.
I was stunned for a few seconds and then called 9-1-1.
Another witness also noticed that the nose of the SR22 was high on the left turn.
According to the Cirrus SR22 manual, the stall speed with 50% flaps at a 45° angle is 78-80 knots. Onboard avionics showed that in the left turn, the SR22 was on a 48° left bank, traveling at 72 knots, with a nose-up pitch of 27.1°.
A second later, when the speed had decreased further, to 69 knots, the plane turned to the right at an angle of 74.2°, turning toward the ground. The SR22 crashed just short of the active runway, in the displaced and paved threshold area, slid on the grass, and then caught fire. If they hadn’t stopped, they would have landed.
The NTSB report concluded that the pilot had misjudged the distance to landing, resulting in an approach that was too short. The nose was high in an attempt to stretch the glide, causing a stall in the turn.
The pilot’s exceeding of the airplane’s critical angle of attack during landing and the flight instructor’s inadequate corrective action, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall/spin at an altitude too low for recovery.
It is a tragic accident, but a loss in the final is not something unique. The report cites the exact scenario in Chapter Nine of the FAA Aircraft Flight Manual as one of the common mistakes made during shutdown approaches. The correct response would be to accept the insufficient landing, landing before the designated point on the runway, or apply power and recover, accepting the failed maneuver.
However, this particular case is interesting for two reasons, both hidden in the record.
The report notes that the instructor should have noticed the problem from the beginning and intervened. He should have indicated the airspeed, turned on the power, or even taken control of the plane before it reached that point. The report further notes that they were unable to confirm the instructor’s recent flight experience.
He had received his flight instructor certificate in January 2020, that was for sure. He had reported that his flight experience was 1,645 hours in December 2024 and that he was employed by a corporate aircraft operator. However, his electronic logbook showed only 382 hours, from May 2019 to March 2024, with 23.9 hours on SR22. There were no further entries in the log book. They further report that he was hired by the corporate commercial aircraft operator in October 2024, but resigned in December, “before successfully completing his training program.”
This involves poor attention to detail, poor record-keeping, and leaving a job before properly committing. But the bizjet operator’s correspondence tells a somewhat different story. When the NTSB first contacted the company to ask if the instructor was still employed by them, they received a stilted response that he had been hired as a first officer in October 2024, but resigned in December 2024. “With the short tenure, he did not fly with [us].”
The NTSB issued a subpoena to view the flight instructor’s training records. His training audit shows that he completed a series of training modules in October 2024, including Job Prevention and Recovery and, surprisingly, Nespresso Vertuo Coffee Machine. However, in November things take a darker turn. The flight instructor attended six simulator sessions in the second week of the month and then failed three in a row on three consecutive days. They did not specify the reasons for the failures. No more simulator sessions are recorded.
Three weeks after the failed simulator sessions, he reported 1,645 hours of flying and employment at the bizjet operator for his medical exam.
The second unexpected detail is a hidden risk of the Cirrus fuselage parachute system, which was highlighted by the NTSB in a guide for first responders. The fuselage parachute is launched using a ballistic parachute recovery system (BPRS): in the event of an emergency in flight, a rocket is activated that extracts the parachute very quickly.
This dash cam video after the accident shows very clearly the danger this system can pose on the ground.
We can hear the rocket activation while first responders are still attending to the scene. The heavy impact and fire following the crash meant there was no chance of survival, but if there had been a rescue attempt it could have injured the survivors and those trying to save them.
He NTSB Guidance warns first responders to look for the triangular warning label on the fuselage that indicates where the rocket would abandon the aircraft and to take care to avoid accidentally activating the rocket when in the cockpit or cutting into the fuselage.
Please note that due to damage sustained during the accident sequence, the activation cable running through the fuselage of a BPRS-equipped aircraft may be under tension and near its breaking point, which could activate the rocket at any time.
The alert cites two other near misses, although this is the only NTSB case in which the rocket actually activated in a dangerous manner after the accident.
None of this changes the tragic events of the day. Two men flew out because they both had the day off, and everything that determined how that day ended was already on paper. But I am increasingly intrigued by the difference between the report and the record in NTSB investigations (other aviation agencies do not release the record except by specific request).
The report tells us what happened. Sometimes, the file tells us what it was like.
