LAX01LA091 · Schweizer SGS 1-26E
Schweizer SGS 1-26E · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Skylark Airport (CA89) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA091
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 1-26E
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer SGS-1
- 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
- N2685H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skylark Airport (CA89), Lake Elsinore, CATo 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 · VFR pattern base
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lake Elsinore, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The student glider pilot had 25 hours total experience. This was his second flight of the day but his first ever in a single-place glider. He reported the flight was normal until the point where he returned for landing and was entering the landing traffic pattern. "[F]or some reason unknown to me, the glider went into a spin." He recovered from the spin about 200 - 300 feet below normal pattern altitude. He acknowledged that he should have adjusted his pattern to account for the loss of altitude but instead attempted to fly a normal pattern. As the aircraft approached the turning point from base leg to final approach, "I should have continued flying straight ahead, but I attempted to turn anyway. I was going too slow and was much too low to make a turn." The glider entered a spin a second time and impacted the ground. The pilot acknowledged having heard his instructor's instruction over the radio telling him to land straight ahead and not attempt the turn to final approach.
Probable cause
The failure of the glider pilot to maintain adequate airspeed during a turn from base leg to final approach, which lead to a stall and spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA091
- Event ID
- 20010206X00399
- Case number
- LAX01LA091
- 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: cc0533e3f7f6761cadedd863c2209968a7e7a1c1b19d9c81d996b96b502c7db6; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:11:14.396Z.