FTW98LA014 · Burkhart Grob 103
Burkhart Grob 103 · Accident: hard landing
From 7F3 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA014
- 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
Burkhart Grob 103
- Aircraft type
- Grob 103
- 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
- N921G
- Operator
- Carol Walker
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 7F3To 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Caddo Mills, TX, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses at the airport observed the glider land hard and porpoise 3 times while landing on runway 31. After the landing, the pilot was reported to have examined the glider for damage before proceeding to be hooked and towed for a second flight. While performing a preflight inspection, a student pilot and his flight instructor, who were scheduled to fly the glider after the private pilot, discovered that the glider was damaged. Damage to the glider included structural damage to the tail wheel, the rudder assembly, the lower portion of the empennage, and the main landing gear well. The private pilot reported that at the time of the mishap, the winds were from the north at 10 knots with occasional gusts to 15 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper flare and improper recovery from a bounced landing. A factor relating to the accident was: the gusty wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA014
- Event ID
- 20001208X09009
- Case number
- FTW98LA014
- 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: 6b786f27e3ba00ddf963318a98d1c11057eb2d7999a3138c4467f774f965247d; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:27:27.409Z.