DEN08LA137 · Schempp-Hirth Ventus 2A
Schempp-Hirth Ventus 2A and AB Sportine Aviacija Genesis 2 · Accident: midair collision en route
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08LA137
- 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
Aircraft 1 · Schempp-Hirth Ventus 2A
- 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
- N777UN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garner Field (UVA), Uvalde, TXTo Garner Field (UVA), Uvalde, TX
- 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
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Aircraft 2 · AB Sportine Aviacija Genesis 2
- Aircraft type
- Ab Sportine Aviacija GENESIS 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
- N110RG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garner Field (UVA), Uvalde, TXTo Garner Field (UVA), Uvalde, TX
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot of N110RG, he was stabilized in a right 55 degree bank and had completed three turns when he heard a loud bang and immediately "lost control." The right wing dropped, the glider rolled to the right, and went inverted. The pilot of N110RG exited the glider and deployed his parachute. During the egress he was seriously injured. According to the pilot of N777UN, he had observed two gliders in the thermal in front of him and entered the thermal underneath them. After two turns in the thermal, he lost sight of the two gliders and collided, shortly thereafter, with N110RG. His left wing and winglet impacted the right wing of the other glider. The pilot of N777UN landed uneventfully. N110RG was destroyed and N777UN sustained minor damage. The damage to the right wing, sustained during the collision, rendered N110RG uncontrollable. Soaring procedure recommend that the pilot exit a thermal if visual contact is lost with another glider and cannot be established via a radio call.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot of N777UN to exit the thermal upon losing visual contact with the other gliders, resulting in a midair collision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08LA137
- Event ID
- 20080814X01240
- Case number
- DEN08LA137
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: d071f88fa7ec543ffbaacb44ca379f926ddd6e2dbf3c22e98186de44b81dc065; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:14:02.110Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states "N110RG was destroyed and N777UN sustained minor damage".