SEA00LA077 · PZL-Bielsko JANTAR 2A
PZL-Bielsko JANTAR 2A · Accident: gear collapsed during landing
From 4S2 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA077
- 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
PZL-Bielsko JANTAR 2A
- Aircraft type
- PZL Bielsko JANTAR 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
- N272AS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4S2To 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
- Gear collapsed
- 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
Upon arrival at the turf airstrip, the glider pilot noticed that the grass on the runway was significantly longer than normal, especially along the sides of the runway surface. During his first takeoff attempt, the right wing of his glider contacted the long grass, and it began to veer sharply to the right. At that point, the pilot released from the tow plane, and tried to maintain directional control as the glider came to a stop. Although he attempted to keep the aircraft aligned with the runway, the aircraft slid off the right side off the runway surface. After inspecting the glider for damage, and finding none, he attempted a second takeoff, which was successful. Upon returning to the airport after soaring for approximately four hours, the pilot elected to land on the same grass runway he had departed from, instead of on the adjacent paved runway. Although the touchdown was successful, at the very beginning of the landing roll, the wing again began contacting the long grass. Although the pilot tried to keep the aircraft tracking straight down the runway, the resistance of the grass pulling on the wing resulted in the aircraft turning sideways and sliding along the runway surface. As the aircraft slid, the gear collapsed and the fuselage fractured just aft of the wing trailing edge.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the glider after its wing came in contact with long grass growing on the runway surface. Factors include the pilot's improper decision to attempt a landing on a runway with known directional control hazards, and long grass present on the runway surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA077
- Event ID
- 20001212X20927
- Case number
- SEA00LA077
- 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: 047ab40127e30d025e1aa769f5c1ef8a7101d6853c00f62ddbc1cc8e70303b6e; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:57:11.872Z.