IAD04LA022 · Masak Scimitar
Masak Scimitar · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Mifflin County Airport (RVL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04LA022
- 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
- 1 · 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
Masak Scimitar
- Aircraft type
- Masak SCIMITAR
- 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
- N12PX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mifflin County Airport (RVL), Reedsville, PATo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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; 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, 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 accident pilot was attempting to fly over a ridge, in the fold in a ridgeline, during a national soaring competition. The glider descended about 1,400 feet in about 6 minutes, and 350 feet "in a very small space" before striking a large tree. According to a nationally known, locally based glider instructor, if the accident pilot had been successful in crossing the ridgeline, "he would have been the only pilot to do so, and probably would have easily won the day." The instructor also noted that as he retraced the accident flight in a motorglider, "I could not help believe I would have done the same thing in the same circumstances," and further observed that there was a good landing field at the base of the ridge, and the valley was wide enough to make shallow turns, but that the accident pilot probably "tried to fly a sharp 180-degree turn to return to the lifting air he just passed." The accident pilot had first flown from the instructor's airport in 1979, and was "an accomplished pilot" who had logged numerous cross country flights and international competitions. Winds aloft would have resulted in turbulence and downdrafts in the vicinity of the crash site.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed, which resulted in an inadvertent stall/spin. A factor was the turbulent wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04LA022
- Event ID
- 20040604X00737
- Case number
- IAD04LA022
- 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: e7340483128ebf41c96cc30836d4a26762229a9428984b4459e7256a243bc852; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:28:26.648Z.