NYC07CA186 · Schempp-Hirth Ventus-2C
Schempp-Hirth Ventus-2C · Accident: forced landing en route
From Warren-Sugarbush Airport (0B7) to Warren-Sugarbush Airport (0B7)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC07CA186
- 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
Schempp-Hirth Ventus-2C
- Aircraft type
- Schempp Hirth VENTUS-2
- 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
- N60LK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren-Sugarbush Airport (0B7), Warren, VTTo Warren-Sugarbush Airport (0B7), Warren, VT
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Forced landing
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, delayed
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 departed the airport on a local flight in his sailplane, and flew to a point approximately 65 miles to the east. During the return leg of the flight, the "lift deteriorated" and the "headwind increased." The pilot realized he would not reach the airport, so he opted to perform a precautionary landing. He selected a "large hayfield," and the "approach and landing were successful." However, during the rollout, the left wingtip contacted terrain, and the sailplane groundlooped to the left causing substantial damage.. At the time of the accident, the surface winds, approximately 40 miles west of the accident site, were recorded as 350 degrees at 18 knots, with gusts to 23 knots. The recorded surface winds for the 2 hours prior to this were similar, with directions of 010 to 350 degrees, and speeds of 12 to13 knots and gusts of 18 to 20 knots. In his report to the National Transportation Safety Board, the pilot noted that he should have "diverted to an airport" sooner.
Probable cause
The pilot's delayed decision to divert to a suitable landing area. Contributing to the accident was the uneven terrain of the forced landing site.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC07CA186
- Event ID
- 20070917X01404
- Case number
- NYC07CA186
- 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: b989614c573a926619a728579e563df94eb04fbd67aeb788f8a6fe74710c0f17; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:33:54.055Z.