DEN07CA092 · Centrair 101C
Centrair 101C · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM) to Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07CA092
- 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
Centrair 101C
- Aircraft type
- Centrair 101
- 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
- N991JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM), Alamogordo, NMTo Alamogordo White Sands Regional Airport (ALM)
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not possible
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 landing on a dirt strip that parallels the main runway. Surface winds were "light." Approximately 25 to 50 feet above the ground, the pilot encountered a "heavy sink" and realized he was probably going to touch down in a ditch perpendicular to the dirt strip. The glider touched down at the far end of the ditch. The right wing dropped and struck a runway marker causing substantial damage to glider. The glider spun around and came to a stop 120 to 150 feet from the marker.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to control the glider after encountering the downdraft causing the glider to land short of the dirt strip. Factors contributing to the accident were the downdraft and the runway marker.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07CA092
- Event ID
- 20070619X00761
- Case number
- DEN07CA092
- 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: 0ac9f740cf8f6d4e6e73070bcfaa7db4e30f9e74f3bba2f72bda249fa68f4ae0; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:49:29.350Z.