LAX96LA144 · Eiriavion Oy PIK 20D
Eiriavion Oy PIK 20D · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From 307 · CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96LA144
- 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
- 0 · 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
Eiriavion Oy PIK 20D
- Aircraft type
- Eiriavion Oy PIK-20
- Category
- Glider
- 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
- N4HT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 307 · CATo not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight to new destination, delayed
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, after an aerial tow aloft he soared in thermals above nearby ridges as he flew toward the San Luis Reservoir. As the thermals began to dissipate he turned back toward Hollister and took what he described as the long route to [the airport]. The lack of available lift precluded making the airport and he landed in an open field. As the right wing dropped, the tip snagged in a large gopher hole and the aircraft ground looped, damaging the wing and empennage.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight decision to take a longer than necessary route back to the airport during a period of marginal lift.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96LA144
- Event ID
- 20001208X05435
- Case number
- LAX96LA144
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 16b0e7197e46de326bedf5da2ef2f619b1180a4e6142d857375b831a181b1c6f; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:43:03.927Z.