WPR12CA304 · Schempp Hirth NIMBUS II
Schempp Hirth NIMBUS II · Accident: loss of lift en route
From Bend Municipal Airport (BDN) to Redmond, OR
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12CA304
- 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
Schempp Hirth NIMBUS II
- Aircraft type
- Schempp Hirth NIMBUS
- 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
- N96132
- Operator
- John R Bentley · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bend Municipal Airport (BDN), Bend, ORTo Redmond, OR
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
According to the pilot, his glider was towed to an altitude of 6,000 feet above mean sea level (msl), which was about 2,600 feet above ground level, and released. The glider achieved an altitude of 7,500 feet msl, and the pilot continued to an area that he normally used for soaring. Once he reached the location, he realized the glider was too low to glide back to the airport and that in order to get to the next available safe field for landing the glider would have to cross a tree line. Upon approach to the trees, the pilot did not think the glider would be able to clear them, so he set up his approach for landing onto a road adjacent to the tree line. On the landing roll the glider’s right wing struck a tree. The pilot reported that the right wing was damaged and that the tail boom had separated. He also stated that there were no mechanical problems with the glider prior to the accident.
Probable cause
A loss of aerodynamic lift that resulted in a forced landing on unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12CA304
- Event ID
- 20120713X84637
- Case number
- WPR12CA304
- 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: cf2c1a5e23fb26602070f72e3a6c75d646bd3ff0ebf297ef577a56ac7f0e0bf0; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:53:20.619Z.