FTW98LA264 · Let BLANIK L-13 BLANIK L-1
Let BLANIK L-13 BLANIK L-1 · Accident: overrun during landing
From 35R to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA264
- 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
Let BLANIK L-13 BLANIK L-1
- Aircraft type
- Let BLANIK L-13
- 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
- N73534
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 35RTo 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
- 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
- Overrun
- 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
- Wire, static
- 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 › Proper descent rate, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
When the glider was adjacent to the intended touch down point, the pilot 'took out some of the spoilers to decrease sink [rate].' After initiating a left turn to base leg he realized that the 'altitude was still much too great and attempted to deploy full spoilers.' Observers on the ground noted that 'no spoilers were deployed; rather, the flaps appeared to have been extended instead.' On final approach, the pilot lowered the nose to try and touch down on the runway, and the aircraft 'porpoised' due to the 'excessive' speed. Approximately 50 feet from the departure end of the runway and less than 15 feet agl, the pilot 'lifted the plane off the ground to avoid hitting the property fence and crossing Highway 290.' He flew the glider over the highway and forced it to the ground in a dirt parking lot. The glider came to a stop after hitting a metal building. The glider also hit a neutral power line during the landing to the parking lot. In the Blanik L-13, the handle for the spoilers is located directly underneath the handle used to deploy the flaps. The pilot stated that 'in concentrating on other factors during landing, it appears that I pulled the wrong lever.' The private pilot rated student had 7 hours total glider time.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper rate of descent. Factor were the pilot's inadvertent lowering of the flaps instead of extending the spoilers, and his lack of experience in gliders.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA264
- Event ID
- 20001211X10310
- Case number
- FTW98LA264
- 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: c7a32c4baa18b3cd81f68a8b26ae512c774d38033fd230c123549c06f25ca9f3; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:48:58.317Z.