LAX00LA009 · Schweizer SGS-2-33A
Civil Air Patrol Hawaii Wing Schweizer SGS-2-33A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Kawaihapai Airfield (HDH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA009
- 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
- N17914
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol Hawaii Wing
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- 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 › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made an off-airport landing due to loss of lift and collided with ground obstructions on the roll out. The pilot stated that no weather facilities are located at the uncontrolled field, other than windsocks that are located at each end, and at midfield. He stated that the preflight weather briefing forecast was for winds from the northeast consistent with the prevailing northeast trade winds. The pilot indicated that he also received local weather information from other glider pilots who had been flying prior to his departure. He said that at 2,000 feet agl he released the glider from the tow plane and began to lose altitude instead of gaining altitude as he expected. He turned to the north, away from a ridge where a strong sink rate had been reported, and proceeded to the practice area. Shortly thereafter, he realized that strong southwesterly winds were creating a strong sink rate condition and he turned toward the airport. When it became apparent that he had insufficient altitude to reach the airport he elected to make an off field landing on a road in an abandoned sugar cane plantation. During the landing rollout the left wing contacted a dirt berm; the glider turned 180 degrees from the initial landing direction and came to rest in a ditch.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in recognizing the onset of a wind direction change resulting in the downward flow of wind on the leeward side of the mountain (strong sink rate).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA009
- Event ID
- 20001212X19984
- Case number
- LAX00LA009
- 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 1999-10-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9e66780834e55974292b6f0b7d275d8525177bb55cbb4ce2d4033abd01e455b2; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:54:38.951Z.