GAA19CA044 · Stoddard Hamilton GLASAIR II FT
Stoddard Hamilton GLASAIR II FT · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Hereford Municipal Airport (HRX) to Laramie Regional Airport (LAR)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA044
- 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
Stoddard Hamilton GLASAIR II FT
- Aircraft type
- Stoddard Hamilton 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
- N505YR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hereford Municipal Airport (HRX), Hereford, TXTo Laramie Regional Airport (LAR), Laramie, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 1995)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot-rated owner reported that, after purchasing the airplane and receiving initial training the day before and the morning of the accident, he and a pilot-rated friend departed for a cross-country flight to their home airport. He added that, after nearly 9 hours of flying, the pilot-rated friend, who was manipulating the flight controls, offered to land at the destination airport because he had landed there before. The horizon was becoming dark, and they attempted to adjust the panel lights for the instruments but realized that the lights were not functioning, so the owner used a flashlight to illuminate the instruments for the landing.
During the landing, the nose landing gear contacted the ground first, and the airplane porpoised. The second bounce was more severe, so the pilot initiated a go-around to no avail. The owner added that, during the third bounce, the airplane exited the runway to the left and then came to rest nose down.
The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine mount and fuselage.
The owner reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The airport’s automated weather observation system reported that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 270° at 11 knots. The pilot landed the airplane on runway 30.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a proper pitch attitude during landing at night, which resulted in a porpoised landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA044
- Event ID
- 20181030X61847
- Case number
- GAA19CA044
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-10-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ff6fcb846a708e51115d054a82111b9a47e37b9dcb87d078e58e123a87bcb75d; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:24:11.265Z.