CHI98LA171 · Stemme S10V
Stemme S10V · Accident en route
From Sheboygan County Memorial Airport (SBM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA171
- 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
Stemme S10V
- Aircraft type
- Stemme S10
- Category
- Glider · from aircraft type
- 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
- N97MT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sheboygan County Memorial Airport (SBM), Sheboygan, WITo 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At an altitude of 1000 feet above ground level (agl) the pilot started the transition between soaring mode and powered flight mode. When completed the pilot observed that throttle movements did not produce power changes. The pilot said he picked a field for an off-airport landing and initiated a normal gliding approach to the field. Between 100 and 150 feet of the off-field landing site the pilot decided to turn into the wind, which was at a 45-degree crosswind, and the left wing tip contacted the ground in a 20-degree bank. The aircraft has a 75.5' wing span. Post accident investigation showed that there was usable fuel in both of the wing tanks. The engine and the drive train were undamaged from the accident. A test run of the engine showed that the engine started, without hesitation, and throttle response was determined to be normal. Engine controls and indications appeared to be in the normal operation limits. No other discrepancies were found.
Probable cause
the improper in-flight decision of the pilot in command to initiate a turn at a close proximity to the ground. Factors to the accident were the starting procedures not being followed and the inadequate altitude to initiate the engine restart.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA171
- Event ID
- 20001211X10024
- Case number
- CHI98LA171
- 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: 20b352f32cf1dc1bf4775b98962d70a41b985754e68e78391c75cd49c56b339a; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:46:13.920Z.