LAX97LA160 · Schweizer SGS 2-33A
Civil Air Patrol Squadron 41 Schweizer SGS 2-33A · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From L01 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA160
- 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 SGS 2-33A
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer SGS-2
- 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
- N2037T
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol Squadron 41
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L01To 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before entering the traffic pattern, the student pilot checked the windsock and the tetrahedron at midfield for current wind information, and proceeded to enter a standard 45-degree approach from the northeast. The wind was at a right angle to runway 7R, approximately 340 degrees, at an estimated 10 miles per hour. A left 90-degree turn onto the base leg was initiated with a tailwind. The pilot checked to make sure he was still inside the center line of the glider runway and transitioned to the final approach sequence. During rollout onto final approach, the aircraft was blown across the southern boundary fence. As the aircraft crossed back over the fence, the left wing struck a fence post.
Probable cause
the student pilot's inadequate compensation for the crosswind condition, and his failure to maintain proper altitude and clearance from the boundry fence, during an approach to land on the runway. Factors relating to the accident were: the crosswind, and overshooting the turn to final approach (failing to attain proper runway alignment).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA160
- Event ID
- 20001208X07756
- Case number
- LAX97LA160
- 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: be56b9df105915be52dbdd06647cb4f0775a4550693d307cc01dccabfc47be78; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:57:52.485Z.