CEN09CA007 · Let Blanik L-13
Let Blanik L-13 · Accident: glider tow event during takeoff
From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34) to Gardner Municipal Airport (K34)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA007
- 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
- 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
- N48026
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gardner Municipal Airport (K34), Gardner, KSTo Gardner Municipal Airport (K34), Gardner, KS
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Glider tow event
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a normal aero-tow takeoff in a glider from runway 21, a 2,154-foot-long turf runway. The tow plane pilot and the glider pilot reported that they both became airborne at approximately 40 knots. Both pilots released the tow rope at the end of the runway when it became obvious that the climb performance of the glider and the tow plane was insufficient to accelerate or to climb out of ground effect. The glider then crashed into the fence at the end of the runway. Weather at the time of the accident was 10 miles visibility, clear of clouds, winds from 150 degrees at 9 knots, with a temperature of 74 degrees and dew point of 57 degrees. Density altitude was calculated as 2,260 feet. Other pilots familiar with this airport report that often in crosswind operations there is induced turbulence from the trees along left side of the departure end of runway 21.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to attempt a takeoff when the climb performance of the tow plane and the glider were inadequate. Contributing to the accident were the high density altitude and the terrain-induced turbulence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA007
- Event ID
- 20081002X05155
- Case number
- CEN09CA007
- 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: investigation status. 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: 3a595342a86dc76c749e6bec53feb7c916fa478110d3fad675c40404f81f5758; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:16:13.754Z.