CEN11LA239 · Glasflugel STANDARD LIBELLE
Glasflugel STANDARD LIBELLE · Accident: low altitude operation/event
From Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2) to Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA239
- 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
Glasflugel STANDARD LIBELLE
- Aircraft type
- Glasflugel STANDARD LIBELLE
- 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
- N99AE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2), Wellington, COTo Owl Canyon Gliderport (4CO2), Wellington, CO
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Low altitude operation/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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a local glider flight when the accident occurred. A witness saw the glider release from the towplane and saw the glider maneuver in steep bank turns as it descended during those turns. At one point, the glider was observed to enter a rapid "zoom" climb followed by a brief period of inverted flight before descending, wings level, about 60-degrees pitch down, into the ground. The glider was subsequently found in a ravine; the glider’s right wing had impacted an embankment and sustained substantial damage, and its dive brake was found extended. The left wing’s dive brake was found retracted.
A postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot did not have a current medical certificate, but he was not required to have a medical certificate for glider operations.
An autopsy indicated that the pilot's cause of death was multiple blunt force injuries and that cardiac disease may have been contributory. The pilot had a documented history of cardiac disease and had a pacemaker implant. The pacemaker was last checked about one month prior to the accident and it was operating normally at that time. A readout of the pilot’s pacemaker indicated that about the time of the accident the pilot experienced a ventricular tachycardia. The degree of the pilot’s injuries made it highly unlikely that he experienced the ventricular tachycardia as a result of the injuries, but that he experienced the condition prior to impact. The symptoms the pilot would have experienced as a result of the ventricular tachycardia likely impaired or incapacitated the pilot, and resulted in his loss of control of the glider.
The toxicology results support the pilot’s use of prescription pain medications the evening before as indicated by his personal physician. None of these was in the therapeutic range at the time of the crash and were therefore unlikely to have contributed to the etiology of the event.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of glider control due to impairment or incapacitation caused by an episode of ventricular tachycardia.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA239
- Event ID
- 20110322X91500
- Case number
- CEN11LA239
- 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: 4f4117b2865201e37e5c0b10f386800eef86f1c8e884b5d8dff993a90a8422ec; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:17:15.860Z.