DFW07LA006 · Windward OWL
Mississippi State University Windward OWL · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From George M Bryan Airport (KSTF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07LA006
- 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
Windward OWL
- Aircraft type
- Windward OWL
- 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
- N401MS
- Operator
- Mississippi State University
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From George M Bryan Airport (KSTF), Starkville, MSTo 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
- 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
- Wing, spar › Collapsed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot lost control of the experimental glider during a test flight, following the in-flight separation of both wings. The pilot was ejected from the disabled glider and was able to deploy his emergency parachute for a safe landing. The operator reported that the glider was towed to a pressure altitude of 12,000-feet by a Cessna tow-plane. During the test flight sequence, the aircraft experienced an in-flight break-up when both wings separated from the fuselage while maneuvering at 7,675 feet. Prior tests on the glider indicated the wing flutter speed was approximately 169 knots. The experimental glider was also equipped with an on-board flight data recording system that sent data to a ground station during the test flight. Post flight analysis of the data indicated that during the nose down attitude, the wings separated from the airframe at approximately 162 knots. The flight engineer stated that the glider was equipped with an airspeed indicator that indicated a maximum airspeed of 105 knots. The stop-point for the airspeed indicator was just beyond the maximum indicated airspeed. The pilot was unaware that the "never exceed" speed of 123 knots had been breached during the descent. The glider was reported to have been equipped with a ballistic recovery system (BRS) parachute, which was successfully deployed. The fuselage of the glider came to rest approximately 2.5 miles northeast of the airport.
Probable cause
The structural failure of the airframe due to the inadvertent excessive airspeed during maneuvering.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07LA006
- Event ID
- 20061030X01573
- Case number
- DFW07LA006
- 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: d39cda201b7a2590613b79a6056b556cc862cada10e2516d649e1d1dea8fc9c2; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:39:53.072Z.