CHI06CA219 · Shempp-Hirth Discuss B
Shempp-Hirth Discuss B · Accident while maneuvering
From Alexandria Airport (I99) to Alexandria Airport (I99)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06CA219
- 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
Shempp-Hirth Discuss B
- Aircraft type
- Shempp Hirth DISCUSS
- 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
- N888TK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alexandria Airport (I99), Alexandria, INTo Alexandria Airport (I99)
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight to new destination, attempted
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
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 pilot was seriously injured during an off-field landing. The pilot reported that while maneuvering near a suitable landing area the glider encountered an area of sinking air. The pilot stated that instead of landing in the available open, uncultivated field, he elected to maneuver toward a "better looking cloud a mile or so further west and away from my selected landing field." The pilot reported that, "On the way to this cloud I encountered strong sinking air, which often surrounds a thermal." The pilot stated that he eventually elected to turn back towards where he came from, but encountered "even heavier-sinking air" and that he did not have enough altitude to glide back to his selected landing site. The pilot reported that the only landing areas available at that time were established cornfields. The pilot stated that he "made a carefully controlled descent into the corn, so not to put one wing in first and cause a cartwheel landing." The pilot reported the glider traveled about 40 feet into the corn crop before the airplane decelerated and dropped "vertically from about 3 to 4 feet." The pilot fractured three vertebrae during the hard landing. The glider sustained minor damage, limited to the gear doors.
Probable cause
The glider pilot's improper in-flight decision to continue searching for thermal lift, instead of landing when the glider was in range of a suitable landing area. Contributing factors to the accident was the lack of thermal lift which resulted in a hard landing in the cornfield.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06CA219
- Event ID
- 20060929X01426
- Case number
- CHI06CA219
- 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: b80ea534a30475f375c61dcfd49ce4b6b864833e501139d8685edf8a068342ab; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:54:45.318Z.