ERA10LA113 · Foster John Glasair III
Foster John Glasair III · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing on approach
From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI) to Waterbury Oxford Airport (OXC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA113
- 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
Foster John Glasair III
- Aircraft type
- Foster John 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
- N540WF
- Operator
- Foster John W
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery County Airpark (GAI), Gaithersburg, MDTo Waterbury Oxford Airport (OXC), Oxford, CT
- 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 pattern final
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a visual approach, at dusk, to a runway with an operating precision approach path indicator (PAPI), the pilot flew well below the approach path and collided with power lines on the final approach leg of the traffic pattern. The pilot had accumulated a total of 7.2 hours of night flight experience and his most recent night flight was more than 4 years prior to the accident. The accident occurred 11 minutes after sunset and 20 minutes before the end of civil twilight. The darker lighting conditions would have required the pilot to rely more on approach aids such as the PAPI lights. Examination of the wreckage and data recovered from an engine instrument system did not reveal any preimpact mechanical malfunctions of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a proper approach path during visual conditions at dusk, which resulted in an in-flight collision with power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA113
- Event ID
- 20100114X81633
- Case number
- ERA10LA113
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 885394a38b77eb6195218c22bb3bcdb45ea712f1d831cde08476d69aa90544d4; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:36:57.334Z.