NYC08CA031 · LET L-33 Solo
LET L-33 Solo · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Ball Airport (79NC) to Ball Airport (79NC)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08CA031
- 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
LET L-33 Solo
- Aircraft type
- Let L-33
- 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
- N284BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ball Airport (79NC), Louisburg, NCTo Ball Airport (79NC)
- 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
- 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
- Weather condition › No thermal lift
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After being towed to an altitude of 1,800 feet, the pilot of the LET L-33 Solo glider released the towline and began "thermaling" to the northwest of the airport. After flying for approximately 11 nautical miles uneventfully, the pilot turned back to the airport. Then while thermaling on the return leg, the glider lost altitude due to the "lift conditions," and the pilot performed an off-field landing. After touching down in a hay field, the glider struck a grass covered culvert and was substantially damaged.
Probable cause
The flight's encounter with an area of no thermal lift. Contributing factors to the accident were the pilot's inadvertent selection of unsuitable terrain with a hidden obstruction.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08CA031
- Event ID
- 20071228X02005
- Case number
- NYC08CA031
- 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: 748a5a90f9479f74024ad9001c46aead8d534e40e5e98253ef8a9f829f88e985; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:17:08.491Z.