CHI00LA015 · Welch MURPHY REBEL MURPHY REB
Welch MURPHY REBEL MURPHY REB · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Glowacki Airport (97G) to Schiffer Acres Airport (3S5)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA015
- 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
Welch MURPHY REBEL MURPHY REB
- Aircraft type
- Welch MURPHY REBEL
- 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
- N8160X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Glowacki Airport (97G), Saint Johns, MITo Schiffer Acres Airport (3S5), MI
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that he attempted a 3-point landing with 30 degrees of flaps. He said a gust of wind blew him up about 10 feet and another gust turned him 90 degrees to the left. He said that he started a go around with the airplane with flaps at 30 degrees. He reduced the airplane's flaps to 10 degrees. He stated the flap lever released from the 10-degree setting and that he must not have set the flap lever all the way down in its notch. The pilot said the plane sunk about 5 feet and the airplane's tail hit the top of the trees first. The pilot listed 4.4 hours of total flight time in this make and model airplane.
Probable cause
the pilot not maintaining altitude and clearance. Factors were the trees, the flap control not fully engaged, and the pilot's lack of total experience in the kind of airplane flown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA015
- Event ID
- 20001212X19926
- Case number
- CHI00LA015
- 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: e70d3bec2219ca8e2c754e82f08df91bec6ad6146471d076920706a6c9d5a9bf; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:48:40.032Z.