SEA98LA094 · Schweizer SGS 2-33A
Schweizer SGS 2-33A · Accident: on ground/water collision with object during landing
From North Plains Gliderport (1OR4) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA094
- 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
- N65918
- Operator
- Emanuel, Joel, H. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Plains Gliderport (1OR4)To 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 · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot-in-command (PIC) reported that he 'failed to maintain proper control of the aircraft, deviated from an acceptable track down a grass runway (270) and contacted a pole with the left wing' while he 'was in the process of turning out to avoid another object.' Conditions at the time were calm winds, with heavily overcast gray skies with light precipitation. After a comment from his passenger the PIC saw the bright white golf cart and began to maneuver away from it. The PIC's 'first reaction on feeling the contact with the pole was disbelief, because I knew I could not have struck the cart, and the pole simply hadn't registered in my mind at all.' Neither the PIC nor passenger ever saw the pole which was ordinarily marked with bright yellow parachute extending out and centered around the pole. With the parachute having been removed, the PIC's expectation of the pole's usual vivid (yellow) image was different from reality and he had no incentive to execute any corrective action. Additionally, the gliderport grass runway had no markings delineating its boundary nor did it have any centerline marking to guide the PIC in maintaining directional control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control and his failure to maintain clearance from a pole. Contributing factors were rain and an overcast which resulted in less than optimal conditions to detect the pole.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA094
- Event ID
- 20001211X10425
- Case number
- SEA98LA094
- 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 1998-06-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5477fe81c194278129e1bf9baf6d449e0e0bb4fb1a9fb9e62815bc01fca9a719; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:41:14.194Z.