LAX99LA175 · Matter GLASAIR-SH-2R GLASAIR-SH
Matter GLASAIR-SH-2R GLASAIR-SH · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From E69 · Payson, AZ to Perry Lefors Field (PPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA175
- 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
Matter GLASAIR-SH-2R GLASAIR-SH
- Aircraft type
- Matter GLASAIR-SH-2R
- 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
- N6DM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From E69 · Payson, AZTo Perry Lefors Field (PPA), Pampa, TX
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Pilot in command › Distance/altitude, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was about 35 minutes into a planned cross-country flight when he smelled a smoke odor from the cockpit area, and began to see smoke coming from a the switch which controls the flap motor. The pilot decided to land, and elected to turn off the electrical power and shut down the engine. The pilot said he misjudged the approach to runway 3, so he turned the power back on, restarted the engine, and set up for an approach to runway 32. After determining that the landing was assured, he again turned off the electrical and engine power and glided to a landing on runway 32. During the landing, he overshot the touchdown point, overran the runway surface, and collided with an airport boundary fence. Subsequent examination of the airplane revealed that the wire splices leading to the flap motor were touching each other and arcing, causing the smoke in the cockpit. Additionally, the three-position flap motor switch was examined. In the down position the switch is spring loaded to return to neutral; however, in the flaps up position, the switch must be physically returned to the neutral position. There are no limit stop proximity switches in the system and the motor will continue to run in either the up or down directions if the cockpit switch is in other than the neutral position. The flap motor had continued to run after the pilot retracted the flaps after takeoff, but did not reposition the switch to the neutral position. The overheated flap motor was another source of heat and smoke in the cockpit.
Probable cause
The pilot misjudging the distance/altitude while on final approach to the runway, which resulted in a landing overrun. Factors were the pilot's failure to position the flap switch to the neutral position after takeoff, resulting in the continuous running and overheating of the flap motor, and the pilot's decision to shut down the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA175
- Event ID
- 20001212X18806
- Case number
- LAX99LA175
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 9e743ef7cbd29b66a5908504877576c3e530e3b7f4ca6f8543bdd5de5cc42f1a; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:32:42.689Z.