WPR11CA208 · Doktor Fiberglas H101 SALTO
Doktor Fiberglas H101 SALTO · Accident: loss of lift while maneuvering
From P48 · Peoria, AZ to P48 · Peoria, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA208
- 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
Doktor Fiberglas H101 SALTO
- Aircraft type
- Doktor Fiberglas H101
- 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
- N110AZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P48 · Peoria, AZTo P48 · Peoria, AZ
- 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
- Loss of lift
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The local soaring flight departed via air-tow. Upon entering two back-to-back thermals, the glider climbed to an altitude of 9,000 feet mean sea level. The pilot maneuvered the glider toward marker clouds for additional thermaling; however, he encountered what he described as severe turbulence and decided to head back to the airport. Just abeam the northwest end of a lake near the airport, the glider encountered turbulence along with a high sink rate. The pilot reported the sink rate to be from 500 to 800 feet per minute (fpm), with extremes up to 1,200 fpm to 1,500 fpm. The pilot attempted to maneuver the glider to minimize its time in the sink condition. He realized that he was not going to make it back to the airport and started to look for a place to land. Due to busy roads and full parking lots, he chose to land along the shoreline of the lake. The glider touched down about 30 yards from the shore. The pilot stated that, in retrospect, he believes that the glider was caught on the leeward side of a ridge or the downdraft of a wave. He reported no mechanical anomalies with the glider prior to the accident. The right side of the tail separated from the glider during the ditching and damage occurred to the spoilers and ailerons.
Probable cause
The glider's encounter with turbulence and loss of lift, which resulted in a ditching in a lake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA208
- Event ID
- 20110425X92522
- Case number
- WPR11CA208
- 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: 19cfb8a8ae65c1ab5ac47d8338061f557e30eb0bfd19356cfb8ca7b37eddddbf; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:05:56.420Z.