ERA23LA057 · Cessna 175
Cessna 175 · Accident: loss of visual reference on approach
From Abbots Airport (6ME6) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA057
- 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
Cessna 175
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 175
- 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
- N7223M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abbots Airport (6ME6), East Sumner, METo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Loss of visual reference
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the amphibious airplane reported that while on final approach to runway 26 he had trouble viewing the runway due to glare from the setting sun. He recalled making “…continuous efforts to block the sun glare.” He planned to make a gradual descent on the final approach to get the best forward view and peripheral views of the area. While descending, he further described that “the brightness inside the cockpit was difficult to observe instruments. I descended towards what I was convinced was the runway. I remember nothing else from that time forward.” The airplane subsequently struck the roof of a business, and the wreckage came to rest next to the building in the parking lot. The airplane’s fuselage, both wings, empennage, and floats were substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. Based on this information, the airplane likely struck the building after the pilot allowed the airplane to descend too low on the approach to the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to continue the approach to land in conditions where he was unable to see in front of the airplane due to sun glare, which resulted in in a collision a building.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA057
- Event ID
- 20221114106277
- Case number
- ERA23LA057
- 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: d20cf079bd9dbdb80b5a738e515a802340a238324c80b94a3f9a6e1442e4d1cb; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:22:07.030Z.