WPR12CA157 · Fisher HP-14 SAILPLANE
Fisher HP-14 SAILPLANE · Accident: loss of lift on approach
From Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN) to Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12CA157
- 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
Fisher HP-14 SAILPLANE
- Aircraft type
- Fisher HP-14
- 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
- N990
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN), Nampa, IDTo Nampa Municipal Airport (MAN), Nampa, ID
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, after soaring for nearly 3 hours, he returned to the departure airport and made a traffic pattern approach for landing. On final approach, he lowered the wing flaps to 40 degrees. The pilot additionally reported that, because it appeared the glider was going to be too high, he further extended the wing flaps. Suddenly, the glider’s sink rate increased, and the glider touched down hard short of the runway. The glider bounced and yawed sideways, the landing gear collapsed, and the fuselage buckled as the glider slid to a stop. The pilot stated that he subsequently observed that the flaps were set to 90 degrees, which was 30 degrees beyond what he had intended.
Probable cause
The pilot’s incorrect positioning of the wing flaps during the landing approach, which resulted in a loss of lift and hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12CA157
- Event ID
- 20120408X32851
- Case number
- WPR12CA157
- 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: 42ace4422cabb57d1dfb534a55fd0341e72fb53002409e0b1e25eb452a9945c9; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:40:52.758Z.