SEA04LA092 · Start & Flug H-101 Salto
Start & Flug H-101 Salto · Accident: forced landing during an emergency descent
From Hobby Field (77S) to 77S
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA092
- 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
Start & Flug H-101 Salto
- Aircraft type
- Start Flug H-101
- 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
- N101Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hobby Field (77S), Creswell, ORTo 77S
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Forced landing
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
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 was released from the tow plane about 10 miles north of Hobby Field, approximately 7,000 feet above the ground (agl). After release, the pilot attempted to find areas of lift around the Coburg Hills, and then started back toward the airport with the intention of being at least 3,000 feet agl when she arrived at the northern edge of Springfield, Oregon (about seven miles north of the airport). But, as the pilot flew south toward Springfield, she encountered a considerable amount of descending air, and the aircraft was down to about 2,400 feet agl when it arrived over the northern portion of Springfield. The pilot then continued to the south, and attempted to find ascending air around Pisgah Mountain, but was unable to do so. She then proceeded further south to Short Mountain (about one mile east of the accident site), and again tried to locate an ascending air mass, but was again unsuccessful. Soon thereafter she decided to discontinue her attempt to continue to Hobby Field, and instead set up for a landing in a nearby open field. The field she chose was about three miles north of Hobby Field, and covered with very tall grass/grain. As she approached the field from the north, she realized that the aircraft's ground speed was higher than it would normally be during an approach for landing because it was at that time experiencing a tailwind of 10 or more knots. She therefore decided to attempt to turn back into the wind prior to touching down in the field. During that turn the pilot allowed the aircraft's left wing to get caught in the tall grass, and it did a one-quarter cartwheel into the terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the terrain while attempting to maneuver the aircraft into the wind during an off-airport landing in an open field. Factors include the pilot's inadequate in flight planning, tailwind conditions during an attempted turn from downwind to base, and tall vegetation in the area that the pilot found it necessary to land in.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA092
- Event ID
- 20040528X00701
- Case number
- SEA04LA092
- 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: ab7c05ac71e8675de409c4118fd6b5e9b1624e4f2da3d9ffc111bf76af99d623; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:17:09.741Z.