LAX00LA201 · Issoire-Aviation PIK-30
Issoire-Aviation PIK-30 · Accident: undershoot during landing
From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA201
- 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
- 1 · 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
Issoire-Aviation PIK-30
- Aircraft type
- Issoire PIK-30
- 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
- N30PK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV)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
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, not maintained
- Weather condition › No thermal lift
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While returning to land at the airport, witnesses saw the glider make a shallow approach, and touchdown outside of the airport perimeter fence. The glider became airborne and flew through a five-strand barbed wire fence. The top two strands broke the canopy and struck the pilot. Compilation of witness interviews revealed that the glider appeared too low for a normal flight pattern, and they did not think that the glider would make it back to the runway. They saw it descend to the ground approximately 50 yards short of the runway and collide with the fence. An inspection of the glider revealed no preimpact anomalies. The engine was also inspected with no discrepancies noted. A GPS unit found onboard the glider was removed and downloaded; no information was available on the unit.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision to attempt to make it back to the runway for landing after experiencing a loss of lift and not maintaining a proper descent rate.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA201
- Event ID
- 20001212X21047
- Case number
- LAX00LA201
- 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: 4e5b5ca9aa7bf71683aa1b703cbea68f7d75f8a088540e0fe2cab739013c121e; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:13:02.956Z.