CEN12LA605 · Burkhart Grob G 103 TWIN II
El Paso Soaring Society Burkhart Grob G 103 TWIN II · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From T27 · El Paso, TX to T27 · El Paso, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA605
- 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
Burkhart Grob G 103 TWIN II
- Aircraft type
- Grob G-103
- 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
- N5489X
- Operator
- El Paso Soaring Society
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From T27 · El Paso, TXTo T27 · El Paso, TX
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 control in flight
- 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 handling/service
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The glider club was launching gliders via a mechanical ground winch. On the first launch attempt, the glider overflew the tow cable and it automatically disconnected when the glider was low to the ground. The glider was able to make a safe landing on the runway. The pilot was overheard saying that the first launch failed because he should have initiated the climb sooner. On the second attempt, the glider once again overran the tow cable. Before the tow cable released, the pilot lowered the nose to pick up the slack in the cable and he instructed the winch operator to go faster. These two steps appeared to have corrected the problem, and the pilot initiated a climb. Shortly after, the glider began to overfly the cable again and it disconnected. The glider entered free flight just above stall speed about 75 feet above the runway. A witness saw the glider nose over and thought the pilot was going to land. Instead, the glider descended rapidly and drifted to the left toward a taxiway. The witness saw the wings of the glider rock back and forth before it impacted the ground hard. Examination of the glider and release hook revealed no mechanical anomalies. The ground winch's engine was reportedly running rough and most likely was unable to produce enough speed to launch the glider.
Probable cause
The pilot‘s failure to maintain glider control while attempting to take off using a ground winch, which resulted in an inadvertent stall low to the ground. Contributing to the accident was the ground winch, which was unable to produce enough speed for a successful glider launch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA605
- Event ID
- 20120905X92749
- Case number
- CEN12LA605
- 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: e3c48f865c371dd2d32ee87fadd2ec10e8e74847edfd16866fceedc18c410989; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:43:41.798Z.