FTW01FA023 · Hall GLASAIR III GLASAIR II
Hall GLASAIR III GLASAIR II · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From 4F4 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01FA023
- 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
- 1 · 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
Hall GLASAIR III GLASAIR II
- Aircraft type
- Hall GLASAIR
- 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
- N462SH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4F4To not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aerobatics, performed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Altitude, low
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the experimental amateur built airplane make three high speed passes over the runway at about 100 feet agl. On the third pass, over the north end of the runway, the airplane nosed up to an approximate 20-degree climb. At approximately 1,000-1,500 feet agl, the airplane began a right barrel roll maneuver. After it rolled to the inverted position, there was a "noticeable hesitation," and the airplane had "dropped to a nose low attitude." The airplane disappeared behind trees in a 40 to 60-degree left bank and 45-degree nose low attitude. After disappearing behind the trees, the sound of the airplane's engine "stopped abruptly." The airplane impacted the ground in a residential back yard. No anomalies with the airplane or engine were noted, and the pilot/builder had not logged any formal aerobatic training.
Probable cause
the pilot's performance of aerobatic maneuvers at a low altitude and his failure to maintain aircraft control. A contributing factor was the pilot's lack of aerobatic experience.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01FA023
- Event ID
- 20001212X22285
- Case number
- FTW01FA023
- 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: f12a668e638879ad7494d1880915ad8ce76e0aabe285015e312a6c2bc2b697e4; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:46:18.470Z.