GAA18CA104 · Geldermann Bert E LANCAIR LEGACY
Geldermann Bert E LANCAIR LEGACY · Accident during takeoff
From Friday Harbor Airport (FHR) to Friday Harbor Airport (FHR)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA104
- 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
- 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
Geldermann Bert E LANCAIR LEGACY
- Aircraft type
- Geldermann Bert LANCAIR LEGACY
- 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
- N145JG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Friday Harbor Airport (FHR), Friday Harbor, WATo Friday Harbor Airport (FHR), Friday Harbor, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, before a local flight, he placed the airplane's wing and canopy covers and his small dog in the baggage compartment. During the initial climb, after retracting the landing gear, the cockpit canopy, which tips forward for entry into the cockpit, came unlatched and opened to about a 45° angle. He attempted to close and relatch the canopy to no avail and decided to return to the departure airport.
Subsequently, after extending the landing gear on final, the airplane lost speed, and the descent rate increased. He applied full power, but the airplane landed hard and short of the runway, and the landing gear collapsed.
The pilot reported that the airplane had an after-market, drop-down step kit that had been removed; however, during the kit removal, the step mechanism had been removed, but the brackets that extended into the baggage compartment had been overlooked. The brackets were attached to the canopy latching mechanism, and he believed his dog accidently hit the protruding brackets and inadvertently opened the canopy in flight.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the center wing spar.
The pilot reported that, before the canopy opened, there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inability to maintain the landing flare, which resulted in the airplane landing hard short of the runway. Contributing to the accident was the cockpit canopy opening in flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA104
- Event ID
- 20180114X05559
- Case number
- GAA18CA104
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-01-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 58c5a6538c1ff0c2c19c5063d78ce0a4f4f1b4179d945fe787c76d1c95832e53; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:18:06.039Z.