CHI03LA328 · LET L-13 Blanik
LET L-13 Blanik · Accident: overrun during landing
From Highland-Winet Airport (H07) to Highland-Winet Airport (H07)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA328
- 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
LET L-13 Blanik
- Aircraft type
- Let 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
- N302SL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Highland-Winet Airport (H07), Highland, ILTo Highland-Winet Airport (H07), Highland, IL
- 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
- Overrun
- 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, excessive
- Pilot in command › Flaps, inadvertent use
- Pilot in command › Proper touchdown point, exceeded
- Pilot in command › Spoiler extension, not performed
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 overran the end of the runway while landing and impacted a dirt mound. The pilot reported that he was obtaining flight instruction for the addition of a glider rating and the accident occurred during his first solo flight. The pilot stated the flight was uneventful until he turned onto final approach. The pilot reported that he was high on final and had to slip to lose altitude. The pilot stated that during the slip the glider had "picked up some airspeed." The pilot reported that the glider landed "long, fast, and as a result hit the mound at the edge of the airport perimeter dirt road." The pilot stated that several witnesses recalled not seeing the spoilers deployed during the final approach and landing. The pilot surmised that he had mistakenly repositioned his hand on the flap lever and as a result had been raising and lowering the flaps instead of the spoilers.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to extend the spoilers and his inadvertent use of the flaps during final approach, which resulted in the proper touchdown point being exceeded due to excessive airspeed. A factor to the accident was the dirt mound.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA328
- Event ID
- 20040102X00004
- Case number
- CHI03LA328
- 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: 366d34288405bfda15d12dff92a3541cfcafe5d2ad3c601fa1196d6ff25b3805; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:44:49.340Z.