IAD96LA083 · Lithuanian Factory of Aviation LAK-12
Lithuanian Factory of Aviation LAK-12 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA083
- 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
Lithuanian Factory of Aviation LAK-12
- Aircraft type
- Lithuanian Factory Of LAK-12
- 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
- N112LK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 · descent
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that his weather information was what he had heard on a weather radio in the local area. When he took off there were strong winds with scattered to broken cumulus clouds in the area. Fifteen minutes after being released by the tow airplane, he noticed the 'black wall' of the cold front quickly approaching from the west. He started an immediate descent toward the field. During his approach to the field, he encountered severe turbulence and in order to avoid an extreme crosswind landing, he decided to land diagonally across the runway into the wind. Shortly before touchdown, the pilot encountered a sudden and severe down draft causing his head to hit and break the plexiglass canopy. The glider's right wing tip then hit the ground and the glider did a 360-degree 'ground-loop'.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to fly with inadequate research of forecast weather.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA083
- Event ID
- 20001208X05796
- Case number
- IAD96LA083
- 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: 7653223218b945595cc08c23b0ef7ccc796721fb1e4f66aad8fcdc4c471682da; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:30:47.065Z.