NYC07LA095 · Rolladen-Schneider LS8-18
Rolladen-Schneider LS8-18 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Williamsport Regional Airport (IPT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07LA095
- 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
Rolladen-Schneider LS8-18
- Aircraft type
- Rolladen Schneider LS8
- 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
- C-GFPQ
- Operator
- Dale C. Kramer · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williamsport Regional Airport (IPT), Williamsport, PATo 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
- 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
- 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
- Weather condition › Turbulence, terrain induced
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 was attempting a ridge-soaring world glider record flight. Two weeks earlier, he completed a similar flight utilizing the same Appalachian ridge lift conditions. The pilot stated that he had prepared "extensively" for the flight, and had consistently monitored the weather conditions during the previous 2 weeks. The pilot also noted that he was very familiar with the ridge, having flown more than 500 hours over it, including a first place finish at a previous year's competition. The pilot characterized the flight, until the accident, as "uneventful," with "good" visibility and winds "favorable for ridge lift." The pilot did not have to make any 360-degree turns during the flight. He was "cruising on course" when he encountered mechanical turbulence near the "spine" of a mountain, which drove the glider down and into the side of a ridge. The pilot and glider were located the following day. There were no mechanical anomalies noted with the glider.
Probable cause
The glider's inadvertent encounter with mechanical turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07LA095
- Event ID
- 20070517X00578
- Case number
- NYC07LA095
- 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: 28817571aa1856f3ffd51ef7711bbfb3e09c51d26fc5cf3308cf35cd473f6868; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:49:48.205Z.