LAX98FA007 · Schweizer 2-32
Schweizer 2-32 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Warner Springs Gliderport Airport (CL35) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA007
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Schweizer 2-32
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 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
- N242DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warner Springs Gliderport Airport (CL35), CATo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Flight into adverse weather, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, inadvertent
- Weather condition › Downdraft
- Weather condition › Mountain wave
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The sailplane pilot departed on a 40-minute scenic flight. The sailplane was released from the airplane tow at 8,000 feet. According to passenger statements, they reached a height of 14,000 feet msl. They also stated that near the end of the flight time, the pilot descended through clouds. The sailplane collided with mountainous terrain about 6,000 feet msl. An ocean/atmosphere scientist glider pilot was flying the same area near the accident time. He stated that the day was dominated by powerful, yet rapidly changing lee wave systems, producing 10/20 knot updrafts and downdrafts in the coastal mountain ranges of the lower Southern California Bight. He stated that the lee wave structure is normally very steady and reliable. Based on about 1,800 hours of flying the wave, he believed that this unusual day was a 1 in 1,000 occurrence changing minute by minute. He stated that on three separate occasions, he encountered abrupt disintegration of a well ordered non-hydrostatic wave, which resulted in the immediate loss of 7,000 to 10,000 feet of altitude.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions after inadvertently encountering mountain wave and associated downdraft conditions. The obscuration and high/mountainous terrain were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA007
- Event ID
- 20001208X09044
- Case number
- LAX98FA007
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-10-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1b91c3e5c9241b90f3fe5646b1a76f6daecf10a03204025c2221cc6b2d4658dd; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:47:47.725Z.