LAX05LA171 · Schweizer SGS 1-26E
Schweizer SGS 1-26E · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Jean Airport (0L7) to 0L7
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA171
- 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
Schweizer SGS 1-26E
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer SGS-1
- 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
- N633S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jean Airport (0L7), Jean, NVTo 0L7
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Altitude, not recognized
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision
- Weather condition › No thermal lift
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a forced landing on desert terrain adjacent to a pipeline. The glider landed hard on a mound, bounced back into the air, and struck the ground at a 30-degree nose down attitude. The pilot said that after release from an aero tow he was unable to find sufficient thermals to support continued flight and decided to return to the airport. He indicated that he had not realized that he had lost 1,000 feet of altitude since release from the aero tow and he was now too low to either make it back to the airport or to pick a more suitable off airport landing site. He chose to land near a pipeline, which appeared to be smoother than the surrounding area. The pilot also reported that the area was typical of the desert terrain, flat with small mounds and hills, and rocks.
Probable cause
the pilot's in-flight decision to continue a flight with weak thermal lift activity, and his delayed recognition of a loss of altitude while attempting to find a thermal in which to soar. A factor in the accident was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA171
- Event ID
- 20050525X00672
- Case number
- LAX05LA171
- 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: a83406a4807f4593d4615521239fbb2abf7871c1c8d97bb1675f207d3214d69b; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:07:58.415Z.