CHI01LA138 · Brault Glasair SH2F
Brault Glasair SH2F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Austin Straubel International Airport (GRB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA138
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Brault Glasair SH2F
- Aircraft type
- Brault GLASAIR SH2F
- 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
- N1490
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Straubel International Airport (GRB), Green Bay, WITo 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
- 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
- Stall
- 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 › Airspeed, low
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental Glasair was destroyed when it impacted the ground during a 360 degree turn for spacing on short final for landing. While on the right downwind, the Glasair pilot was informed by ATC that he was number two for landing behind a Cessna 172 that was on a left downwind for landing on runway 24. The Glasair was on a right base when the pilot reported that he had the Cessna on short final in sight. The ATC controller reported that while the Glasair was on final, the Cessna was still on the runway. The ATC controller instructed the Glasair to "execute a go-around and make a left traffic." The Glasair pilot responded, "Okay you want me to just do a quick left here and come back in?" The controller stated, "Affirmative." Ten seconds later an ELT transmission could be heard. The controller reported, "[The Glasair] executed a climbing left turn and I observed the aircraft's entire underside (wings and belly), he then continued to roll further to his left and then started an abrupt decent toward the ground. I observed [the Glasair] impact the ground and immediately notified crash personnel." Another witness reported seeing the airplane flying toward the airport. He reported, "The airplane was approaching the runway and it wobbled a little bit. The plane then banked hard to its left as if the wind was caught under the right wing. The plane then went straight up, looped to the left, then came straight down and hit the ground nose first." The inspection of the airplane revealed no pre-impact anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot allowed the airspeed to get too low and inadvertently stalled the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA138
- Event ID
- 20010517X00946
- Case number
- CHI01LA138
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 828249f9a3f094d9316026e7cd9f0f287c1c1a93cb31a7d1012c8084ccc8ae2b; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:32:56.098Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "The experimental Glasair was destroyed when it impacted the ground".