SEA08CA163 · LET Blanik L-13
LET Blanik L-13 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) during landing
From Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO) to Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08CA163
- 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 Blanik L-13
- Aircraft type
- Let BLANIK L-13
- 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
- N48029
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO), Arlington, WATo Arlington Municipal Airport (KAWO)
- 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
- Landing
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After a 15-minute glider flight, the pilot entered the traffic pattern for a planned full-stop landing on a grass airstrip that ran adjacent to the active paved runway. He then extended his downwind leg in order to create a greater clearance between himself and a powered airplane that was landing on the paved runway. After rolling out on base leg, the pilot realized that he had extended his downwind leg too far to reach the grass strip under the gusting wind conditions. He therefore decided to land in a field short of the grass runway. While maneuvering to land in that field, he failed to maintain clearance from a nearby tree. After the wing of the glider hit the tree, it cart-wheeled into the field, and sustained wrinkling and crushing damage to both wings and fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from a tree while making an off-field landing in a glider. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate compensation for the gusting winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08CA163
- Event ID
- 20080801X01138
- Case number
- SEA08CA163
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-07-21.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f990148f467eb3ad1d6932fd1722c0c648696546f1118ef63095a4fc0f1aed0f; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:58:03.236Z.