ERA14LA199 · Aircraft Industries A.S. L33 SOLO
North Carolina Soaring Association Aircraft Industries A.S. L33 SOLO · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5) to Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA199
- 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
Aircraft Industries A.S. L33 SOLO
- Aircraft type
- Aircraft L33
- 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
- N318BA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5), Bunn, NCTo Crooked Creek Airport (7NC5), Bunn, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 1997)
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The glider was towed aloft and then released. Shortly after, the glider pilot radioed the towplane pilot and informed him that he was returning to the airport. Because of the short duration of the glider flight, the towplane pilot asked the glider pilot if he wanted to be towed aloft again, and he replied that he did. Witnesses on the ground reported observing the glider low on the downwind leg and then turning onto the base leg. Based on data from the onboard portable GPS receiver, the glider turned onto final approach and flew in a southerly direction toward the runway with its groundspeed decreasing from 34 to 25 knots during the last few seconds of the flight. The glider impacted the ground in a nose-low attitude, which caused the wing to separate.
Postaccident examination of the glider found no evidence of a preimpact failure or malfunction of the flight controls or air brakes, and the air brakes were retracted. The published stall speed for the glider with the air brakes retracted is about 34 knots indicated airspeed. Although the indicated airspeed during the final portion of the flight could not be determined, the evidence indicates that the pilot likely failed to maintain adequate airspeed while approaching the airport, which resulted in a stall/mush.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed while approaching the airport, which resulted in a stall/mush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA199
- Event ID
- 20140416X03718
- Case number
- ERA14LA199
- 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: 27f3e15c6683714d34dcf14bc3099b719b9ce6e621a3a9d7b76311040a0e6a1e; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:31:04.800Z.