WPR09LA318 · Alexander Schleicher Gmbh & Co ASW 27-18E
Alexander Schleicher Gmbh & Co ASW 27-18E · Accident: aircraft structural failure while maneuvering
From Ephrata Municipal Airport (EPH) to Ephrata Municipal Airport (EPH)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA318
- 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
- 1 · 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
Alexander Schleicher Gmbh & Co ASW 27-18E
- Aircraft type
- Schleicher ASW-27
- 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
- N129TD
- Operator
- Timothy Donovan
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ephrata Municipal Airport (EPH), Ephrata, WATo Ephrata Municipal Airport (EPH), Ephrata, WA
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was preparing for a glider competition with other glider pilots. Witnesses were flying their gliders in the area and reported seeing the glider thermalling, then entering a spin to the right. During the spin, the rotation increased into a rapid rotation and then into a graveyard spiral. One witness reported that during the second spiral rotation the outboard wingtip panels arched upward. Following the flexing of the wings, it appeared that they “...disintegrated...The wings looked like they exploded.” The witness did not see a parachute. Examination of the glider revealed no preimpact mechanical anomalies. Toxicological evaluation of tissue samples from the pilot were consistent with the use of marijuana and of diazepam (a prescription anti-anxiety medication also known by the trade name Valium) at some time prior to the accident, but no blood was available for analysis and no estimate could be made of when the substances were last used or whether the pilot may have been impaired by their use.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the glider during flight and his exceedance of the glider’s design limits during an attempted recovery from a spin.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA318
- Event ID
- 20090629X04921
- Case number
- WPR09LA318
- 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: f934d4d703244b33b7897b11efecf1a15f1936fd2fd251ea126d9b42d394a15d; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:19:25.331Z.