CEN21FA024 · Glasair III
Glasair III · Accident
From Lansing Municipal Airport (KIGQ) to Lansing Municipal Airport (KIGQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21FA024
- 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
Glasair III
- Aircraft type
- Glasair III
- 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
- N713MJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lansing Municipal Airport (KIGQ), Chicago, ILTo Lansing Municipal Airport (KIGQ), Chicago, IL
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
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 was on a local flight and his flight track indicated he was returning to his departure airport when the accident occurred. A witness reported seeing the airplane at a low altitude “dragging” a light pole across the highway. The airplane then impacted the highway and came to rest in a wooded area alongside the road. Another witness reported that it sounded like the engine lost power and momentarily regained power before losing it again.
The wing fuel tanks were breached in the accident, and the amount of fuel on board could not be determined.
The two-bladed, constant speed propeller remained attached to the engine. One blade had minimal damage, the second blade’s tip was bent back, starting about mid-span, and the leading edge was rough; this damage was consistent with the propeller not rotating at the time of impact. The engine was equipped with an electric ignition system and was unable to be field tested. The engine examination did not identify any preimpact anomalies that would affect engine operation.
The witness statement and signatures on the propeller are consistent with a loss of engine power; however, a reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Reviewed records show that ketamine was administered to the pilot after the crash. Thus, the postmortem toxicology results provide no evidence of any pre-crash use of potentially impairing substances by the pilot.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21FA024
- Event ID
- 20201021102171
- Case number
- CEN21FA024
- 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, coordinates. 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: ef6c0d6340af0af4301429d7b70fbbe4398898ea08f35ccdfb67597c19e38b1c; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:21:21.828Z.