LAX99LA232 · Schweizer SGS-2-33A
Schweizer SGS-2-33A · Accident: hard landing
From Kawaihapai Airfield (HDH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA232
- 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
- N17902
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kawaihapai Airfield (HDH)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 · 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated the winds were blustery at 15 to 20 knots. He turned to final approach at 350 feet with full spoilers. At 200 feet he reduced spoilers to 25 percent. He was maintaining 75 to 80 miles per hour (mph) and increased spoilers to 50 percent at 100 feet. He stated he experienced a sudden loss of velocity at 25 feet, followed by a nose down attitude. After the glider contacted the runway, the nose went up and the glider became airborne again. The pilot applied full spoilers with a forward slide in an attempt to flare. The nose touched down followed immediately by the tail contacting the ground. The glider became airborne, then touched down and stopped within 15 to 20 feet.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to adequately compensate for the existing gusty wind conditions and his improper recovery from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA232
- Event ID
- 20001212X19041
- Case number
- LAX99LA232
- 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 1999-06-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 04c39dd8c8e48137fd855e878da25a0076f77196f1534bdf20d3bc59cddfedcc; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:29:41.909Z.