ATL02LA177 · Schempp-Hirth KA8B
Schempp-Hirth KA8B · Accident: undershoot during landing
From Tullahoma Regional Airport William Northern Field (THA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02LA177
- 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
Schempp-Hirth KA8B
- Aircraft type
- Schempp Hirth KA8
- 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
- N8747
- Operator
- David A. Ball · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tullahoma Regional Airport William Northern Field (THA), Tullahoma, TNTo 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
- 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 › Airspeed, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Altitude, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the student pilot, he was on his 17th solo flight at the time of the accident. After getting a car-tow, he climbed to 1100 feet, and maneuvered until he had descended to 600 feet. At this altitude, the student pilot elected to return to the airport. He entered the left traffic pattern for runway 06. As he turned onto the base leg of the approach, he realized that he was low and the wind continued to blow the glider away from the runway. The student pilot elected to turn final. Being concerned about the loss of altitude, the pilot decided to raise the nose in an effort to extend the glide. The student pilot said that this maneuver allowed the glider to clear most of the trees on the approach end of the runway, but the right wing collided with the top of a tree. The glider spun around and fell into a small grove of trees short of the runway.
Probable cause
The student pilot misjudged the airspeed and altitude during a visual approach to land that resulted in the in-flight collision with the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02LA177
- Event ID
- 20021022X05364
- Case number
- ATL02LA177
- 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: f05b5125ee02d65841621dbee6f62f024b250ed8529ec1e06ca091a42e3a2179; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:10:54.024Z.