NYC97LA084 · Schempp-Hirth CIRRUS-S
Schempp-Hirth CIRRUS-S · Accident during initial climb
From 3G3 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA084
- 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
Schempp-Hirth CIRRUS-S
- Aircraft type
- Schempp Hirth CIRRUS-S
- 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
- N9775
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3G3To 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Speed brakes, inadvertent activation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
This was second flight of the day for the pilot/owner of the glider. The first flight lasted about 5 minutes, because the pilot stated that he could not gain any altitude, and he landed back at the airport. During the second takeoff, the pilot noticed the speed brakes were deployed. When he retracted the speed brakes, the glider 'popped up' higher than the tow plane, and the pilot released the tow rope. The pilot believed that he was too low to make it back to the airport, and went under telephone wires onto a road. The glider then ground-looped, and the left wing trailing edge struck a tree and the glider's tail broke midway down the tail cone. The pilot stated that there was the possibility that he may have bumped the speed brake handle.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent activation of the speed brakes while being towed for takeoff. Subsequently, the glider pilot lost sight of the tow airplane due to excessive altitude, released the tow rope, and performed an off airport landing during which the glider collided with a tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA084
- Event ID
- 20001208X06808
- Case number
- NYC97LA084
- 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: 6e870a7f240627dd5562bf8ec05790de88c475b0e6f99ad735261337938d43c4; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:03:11.574Z.