LAX05LA239 · As+ Ltd AC4
As+ Ltd AC4 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Air Sailing Gliderport (NV23) to Air Sailing Gliderport (NV23)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA239
- 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
As+ Ltd AC4
- Aircraft type
- As+ AC4
- 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
- N9276Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Air Sailing Gliderport (NV23), Sparks, NV, NVTo Air Sailing Gliderport (NV23)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Stall, encountered
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 stalled and impacted level terrain on final approach to landing. The pilot returned to the gliderport about 20 minutes after release from the tow plane. The pilot made no radio transmissions to indicate the reason for the return to the gliderport. Airborne and ground witnesses reported that they saw the accident glider enter the downwind leg at a high altitude. After turning onto the final approach leg, the glider began to make S-turns to lose altitude. Witnesses indicated that on the third S-turn, about 200 feet above the ground, the glider stalled and descended in a near vertical nose down attitude and impacted the ground short of the runway. No evidence of a preimpact mechanical malfunction or failure was found during post accident examination of the glider. Chlorpheniramine, an over-the-counter sedative antihistamine, was detected on toxicology testing of the pilot's blood at a level several times higher than that expected with the dosage described in the pilot's most recent application for airman medical certificate.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain an adequate airspeed while performing S-turns on final approach, which resulted in a stall and uncontrolled descent into terrain. A contributing factor in the accident was the pilot's impairment due to ingestion of an over-the-counter sedating antihistamine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA239
- Event ID
- 20050811X01227
- Case number
- LAX05LA239
- 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: 640cb65484b3a2bec617a94f8c0387d6be854649e60689864a79e355313bd9db; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:58:22.618Z.