WPR13FA022 · Behne GLASAIR III
DSB Behne GLASAIR III · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin while maneuvering
From Funny Farm Airport (4CA2) to Funny Farm Airport (4CA2)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13FA022
- 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
- 2 · 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
Behne GLASAIR III
- Aircraft type
- Behne 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
- N655DB
- Operator
- DSB
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Funny Farm Airport (4CA2), Brentwood, CATo Funny Farm Airport (4CA2), Brentwood, CA
- 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
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The two pilots, one of whom owned the airplane, departed for a personal flight. The airplane was equipped with dual flight controls; however, it could not be determined which pilot was manipulating the controls at the time of the accident. Witnesses located adjacent to the accident site reported that they heard a loud noise and then saw the airplane slow down and begin to spin left in a slight nose-low attitude. The witnesses further reported that the airplane continued to spin until it impacted terrain. Postaccident examination of the engine and airframe revealed no evidence of any preexisting mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Wreckage and impact signatures were consistent with a flat-spin, slightly nose-low impact with terrain.
Postmortem toxicology tests for the left seat pilot/owner were positive for doxylamine (an antihistamine used in over-the-counter sleep aids and cough medicines) and methamphetamine (a central nervous system stimulant). Because the amount of doxylamine in his system at the time of the crash was below the therapeutic limit, its direct effects on the left-seat pilot's performance at the time of the crash could not be determined. Although methamphetamine was present in the left-seat pilot's blood, the amount was below the calibration limit of the toxicology tests. However, both methamphetamine and its metabolite (amphetamine) were present in his urine. Regardless, no direct correlation exists between the concentration of drug in the blood and the user's symptoms. Although it is unlikely that the left-seat pilot was actively euphoric at the time of the flight, he was likely in the late phase of symptoms or in the withdrawal phase(during which concentrations of the drug may be undetectable), which would have been impairing. However, as noted, it could not be determined which pilot was manipulating the controls at the time of the accident; therefore, the impact of the left-seat pilot's drug impairment on the flight could also not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane while maneuvering, which resulted in a stall and subsequent spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13FA022
- Event ID
- 20121024X11737
- Case number
- WPR13FA022
- 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: ddc9502bdfe3f89291f81499a30e7390aaadadb36e1203293641c3259af97894; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:46:54.929Z.