ERA22FA399 · Conway Philip J Glasair Super II SFT
Conway Philip J Glasair Super II SFT · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) on approach
From Rochester International Airport (RST) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22FA399
- 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
- 2 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Conway Philip J Glasair Super II SFT
- Aircraft type
- Conway Philip GLASAIR SUPER II SFT
- 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
- N11HC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rochester International Airport (RST), Rochester, MNTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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 › 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 purpose of the flight was for the commercial pilot in the left seat to build flight time with an instructor so that he could be included on the owner’s insurance policy. This was the first flight to satisfy those requirements and the two accident pilots had not flown together previously. The flight instructor had 2 hours of flight experience in the Glasair; the commercial pilot-under-instruction had no flight experience in the airplane. Recorded radar and GPS data revealed that the airplane departed the home airport and airwork was performed for about 45 minutes. The flight then proceeded to another airport for traffic pattern work. The pilots entered the visual pattern and made four approaches without the airplane touching down. On the fifth approach, the airplane turned base-to-final about ½ to 1 mile sooner (tighter) than on the previous patterns.
The accident approach was flown at a higher descent rate, bank angle, and pitch attitude than the previous approaches. The descent rate approached 2,500 fpm, the left bank angle approached 100°, and the pitch attitude was about 15° airplane-nose-down. During the final turn, a positive normal load factor was observed, between 1 and 2 g just before the end of the recorded data, and shortly before ground impact, indicating that the airplane did not stall before the crash. The lateral acceleration during the final turn was about 0.3 g, which was consistent with a side slip (forward slip) maneuver, commonly used when an airplane is high on approach.
An examination of the airframe and powerplant revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot flying at the time of the accident could not be determined; however, it is apparent that the flight instructor allowed an unstabilized approach to proceed beyond the point where a safe recovery was not possible. Had the instructor either discontinued the poor approach or directed the commercial pilot-under-instruction to do so, the accident would have been prevented.
Probable cause
The continuation of a poorly-flown, unstabilized approach and the flight instructor’s failure to direct a discontinuance of that approach, resulting in a collision with terrain during turn to final.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22FA399
- Event ID
- 20220906105876
- Case number
- ERA22FA399
- 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: bf5f3ae21ac2b4e561a22ddd07dd5943b9ad033f7512771d06ca0324c9743fe7; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:50:39.633Z.