ATL96LA089 · Schweizer SGS233A
Schweizer SGS233A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From North Raleigh Airport (00NC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96LA089
- 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
Schweizer SGS233A
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer SGS233
- 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
- N1197S
- Operator
- John Wiliam Styer
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Raleigh Airport (00NC), NORTH RALEIGH, NCTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor pilot stated that the student pilot was operating the aircraft controls during the landing approach. The glider started to drift right of the runway centerline. As the glider drifted farther, the instructor took over the controls. He reported having full deflection of the flight controls to counteract the drift, but the glider continued to drift. The right wing tip of the glider then hit trees, and the glider spun until it came to rest in the trees approximately ten feet off the ground. The instructor pilot reported that the trees are about 25 feet from the edge of the runway.
Probable cause
the failure of the instructor pilot to maintain control of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96LA089
- Event ID
- 20001208X05701
- Case number
- ATL96LA089
- 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: 687d16f38a8ab0b5334dfd6db6e6fe2e671c07370cc904eaf8bbf8dde6e0cfd9; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:25:10.440Z.