ERA22LA304 · Arion LIGHTNING LS1
Arion LIGHTNING LS1 · Accident: aircraft wake turbulence encounter on approach
From Rostraver Airport (FWQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA304
- 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
Arion LIGHTNING LS1
- Aircraft type
- Arion LIGHTNING
- 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
- N326AL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rostraver Airport (FWQ), Rostraver, PATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aircraft wake turbulence encounter
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the light sport airplane reported that he was flying to an uncontrolled airport to attend an airshow later during the day. The destination airport traffic pattern was busy with several airplanes in the traffic pattern and a flight of three north of the airport. The pilot entered the traffic pattern by overflying the airport and crossing midfield onto a left downwind leg. At that point, a life flight helicopter reported 2.5 miles southwest. The pilot subsequently heard a report from the helicopter again and asked him where he was. The helicopter stated that he was on the right base leg for runway 11 and number two to land. The pilot of the airplane announced turning to final for runway 11. He was over the threshold at 20 ft above ground level when he saw the helicopter cross the runway several hundred feet ahead of him. The airplane then encountered the rotor wash, rolled right inverted and struck the runway, coming to rest on the runway.
The pilot of the helicopter reported that he departed his home base about 2.5 miles from the airport to attend an airshow public relations event at the airport. He entered a right base leg for runway 11 and stated intentions to land No. 2 as there were four airplanes in the traffic pattern and airplane No. 3 (the accident airplane) was turning from left downwind to left base. The helicopter approached the runway numbers, sidestepped north to taxiway A1, and landed at a predesignated position on the taxiway for the airshow. After shutting down, the pilot was told by ground personnel that the airplane following him was involved in an accident.
Probable cause
The airplane pilot’s inadvertent encounter with rotor wash/turbulence during short final approach, which resulted in a loss of control in flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA304
- Event ID
- 20220711105441
- Case number
- ERA22LA304
- 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, 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: ca4ebc47f3cf7c2851cbd548b6dcfaa6b22bf2d1e382e381d3aebaf386657a4b; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:26:05.154Z.