ERA13CA195 · Phoenix Air U15
Palmetto Phoenix Associates Phoenix Air U15 · Accident: turbulence encounter en route
From Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ) to Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA195
- 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
Phoenix Air U15
- Aircraft type
- Phoenix Air U15
- 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
- N94DK
- Operator
- Palmetto Phoenix Associates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Mountain Empire Airport (MKJ), Ruiral Retreat, VATo Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (CUB), Columbia, SC
- 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
- Turbulence encounter
- 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 structures
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot of the motorized glider, he was flying at an altitude of 6,000 feet mean sea level (msl) en route to his home airport when he noted an episode of turbulence on the avionics logs for his flight path. He climbed to an altitude of 6,500 feet msl to avoid the turbulence and continued to his destination; however, the glider subsequently encountered severe turbulence that lasted for a few seconds. The pilot reported that during that time he heard a cracking noise in the rear of the glider, which he attributed to a loose quart of oil in the baggage compartment. He continued the flight and landed at his home airport uneventfully. While he was cleaning the glider after the flight, the pilot noted substantial damage to the empennage, which included a 12-inch crack to the composite structure under the right side of the vertical stabilizer. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation before the turbulence encounter; further, he stated that he noted no controllability problems with the glider after the turbulence encounter.
Probable cause
The motorized glider’s encounter with clear air turbulence, which resulted in substantial damage to the empennage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA195
- Event ID
- 20130410X84052
- Case number
- ERA13CA195
- 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: 1c7bd433d58284523911b7d00dccfcf22c88959273e2807cbae63faa7c9d5065; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:15:41.896Z.