ERA21LA396 · Sonex WAIEX
Sonex WAIEX · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA396
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Sonex WAIEX
- Aircraft type
- Sonex WAIEX
- 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
- N220JD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2019)
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- 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 stated that he was performing maintenance on his airplane and running the engine at full throttle to verify the exhaust gas temperature was within limits. He said that after the last adjustment and anticipating another adjustment, he only latched the canopy enough to keep it in place while performing a test run on the ground. After the test run was performed, the pilot departed without properly securing the canopy. Shortly after takeoff, the canopy was “ripped off” the airplane and while returning to the runway, the approach was too low and the airplane contacted trees on short final. The airplane landed short of the runway and did “two pancakes” resulting in substantial damaged to the fuselage, and firewall. The pilot further stated there were no mechanical failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain a proper glidepath during landing. Contributing to the accident was his failure to ensure the canopy locks were properly configured prior to flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA396
- Event ID
- 20220316104789
- Case number
- ERA21LA396
- 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, cause areas. 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: ef529ec4cd4d523b0cd6007e55170837a66d406f97786311fd3e0d66347ac7af; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:02:41.882Z.