NYC00LA251 · Let BLANIK L-13 BLANIK L-1
Let BLANIK L-13 BLANIK L-1 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From N82 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA251
- 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
Let BLANIK L-13 BLANIK L-1
- Aircraft type
- Let BLANIK L-13
- 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
- N48037
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From N82To 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
- Approach
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to takeoff the glider pilot observed 'dark clouds' to the west of the airport. Additionally, the tow plane pilot pointed to the clouds prior to takeoff. The glider pilot 'did not feel that the clouds were moving all that fast,' and elected to depart. The glider was towed to an altitude of 2,500 feet and released. About 1 minute later, the glider pilot noticed that it was 'suddenly much darker, and the clouds had quickly moved over the airport west to east.' He also began to experience some light rain, and intended to return to the airport for landing. The pilot stated that while entering the traffic pattern for landing, 'the rain got so heavy that I had no visibility forward.' While on final approach for landing, the glider began to impact trees. The glider veered to the left and pitched down towards the ground. The glider came to rest in the trees, about 300 feet from the runway threshold. The pilot did not report any mechanical problems with the glider. The pilot reported 34 hours of total flight experience, all in gliders.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper weather evaluation and decision to initiate a flight with an approaching rain shower. A factor in this accident was heavy rain, which reduced visibility.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA251
- Event ID
- 20001212X22051
- Case number
- NYC00LA251
- 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: 0df1c6c488a4e27cbd7e9323f9119d740e5a4b5a5d0e92296bd4b1280021a334; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:29:20.458Z.