DEN05LA108 · Grob G103
Grob G103 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0) to Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA108
- 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
Grob G103
- Aircraft type
- Grob G103
- 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
- N916G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0), Moriarty, NMTo Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0), Moriarty, NM
- 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 · emergency 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
- Altitude › Low
- Pilot in command › Glider/tow release, intentional
- Pilot in command › Visual/aural perception
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The tow plane pilot said that the winds were 5 to 15 knots "from the west or northwest" and that "25 knot gusts were not uncommon." During the takeoff roll, he saw an "extreme dust devil right in front [of the airplane]" and "paper-sized pieces of cardboard spinning sharply." He momentarily lost control of the tow plane, then noticed the glider was no longer in tow. He flew an abbreviated traffic pattern and landed. It was then that he noticed his propeller had sustained a ground strike. The glider pilot said that after an uneventful aero tow, the tow plane started "pulling up and then touched back down." He said the "left wing [was] low and [the] tail high and right.." He then saw a "puff of smoke" and "couldn't tell if the tow plane had crashed, or was about to crash." He elected to release and perform an emergency landing from an altitude of 75 to 100 feet. After turning 90 degrees to the right, the glider was "close to the ground" so the pilot "leveled the wings and tried to flare." The glider impacted terrain and ground looped, causing substantial damage. Both pilots agreed that the "puff of smoke" seen by the glider pilot was actually dust thrown in the air during the tow plane's propeller strike.
Probable cause
the glider pilot's intentional tow release at too low an altitude when he erroneously perceived the tow plane was about to crash. A contributing factor was the unsuitable terrain on which to make a landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA108
- Event ID
- 20050713X01002
- Case number
- DEN05LA108
- 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: 3fa889eb1a0f7efad40f2e5a58c9d59c391ff2eb367f503b70f072a72f8044df; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:40:03.713Z.