FTW02LA092 · Schleicher AS-W19
Schleicher AS-W19 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From OEO · Albuquerque, NM to OEO · Albuquerque, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA092
- 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
Schleicher AS-W19
- Aircraft type
- Schleicher AS-W19
- 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
- N333US
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OEO · Albuquerque, NMTo OEO · Albuquerque, NM
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Low altitude flight/maneuver, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The glider and tow plane and were climbing through 400-500 feet AGL, when both aircraft encountered turbulence. The glider was "climbing and sinking rapidly and the glider pilot could not neutralize the motion. She believed that she had enough altitude to turn and make a downwind landing, so she released the tow line. The pilot then turned back to the runway to make a downwind landing. While in the turn, the pilot received a radio call from the ground telling her to try to continue around to make a landing into the wind. The pilot attempted to follow the instructions from the person on the ground, and the left wing tip contacted the ground before the turn was completed. The pilot stated that if she had continued on her original plan to land downwind, then she thought that she could have made the landing without incident.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempt to perform a turn upwind at a altitude too low to complete the turn. A factor was the turbulance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA092
- Event ID
- 20020313X00341
- Case number
- FTW02LA092
- 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, coordinates. 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: fbff9220cd8a3a1817d7a1f191f5c8b2efe6345b9a29224a3e085848e24ec32f; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:46:03.083Z.