ERA14LA341 · LET L 23 SUPER BLANIK
Civil Air Patrol LET L 23 SUPER BLANIK and Civil Air Patrol LET L 23 SUPER BLANIK · Accident: ground collision while standing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14LA341
- 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 1 · LET L 23 SUPER BLANIK
- Aircraft type
- Let L-23
- 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
- N400AZ
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roosevelt Memorial Airport (5A9), Warm Springs, GATo Roosevelt Memorial Airport (5A9), Warm Springs, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 1999)
- 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
- Standing
- 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
- Ground collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Aircraft 2 · LET L 23 SUPER BLANIK
- Aircraft type
- Let L-23
- 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
- N342BA
- Operator
- Civil Air Patrol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roosevelt Memorial Airport (5A9), Warm Springs, GATo Roosevelt Memorial Airport (5A9), Warm Springs, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 1999)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A landing glider collided with another glider on the active runway. The flight instructor of the glider on the runway stated that he and the student pilot landed the glider and that it came to rest about 1,000 ft from the runway threshold. The instructor was having a conversation with the air boss while the glider was still on the runway when it was struck from behind by the landing glider. The air boss indicated that, during this conversation, he watched the second glider turn from the base to the final leg in the traffic pattern and then land. The flight instructor of the second glider stated that he and the student pilot landed just beyond the displaced threshold markers at the approach end of the runway and that both he and the student applied "maximum braking" but were unable to stop the glider before impacting the glider on the runway. According to both flight instructors, they had performed numerous landings that day in their respective gliders as part of the training requirements for the students. Both glider instructors reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with either glider that would have precluded normal operation.
The Civil Air Patrol procedures stated that, after landing and coming to rest, each glider was to be removed from the runway and that at no time was a glider to be on the runway while another glider was landing. Federal Aviation Administration regulations and guidance indicated that the landing glider has the right-of-way over all aircraft on the surface and that, after landing, the pilot "should move or taxi the glider clear of all runways." Given that the air boss watched the landing glider turn from base to final leg in the traffic pattern while talking to the instructor in the glider on the runway, it is likely that the instructor would have had sufficient time to move the glider off the runway before the other glider landed, which would have prevented the accident. It is also likely that the instructor of the first glider was distracted by talking to the air boss and that neither he nor the air boss realized that the second glider was a concern until it was too late. The pilot of the glider on the runway should have moved the glider off the runway as soon as possible to allow the landing glider sufficient space to land without the possibility of a collision.
Probable cause
The failure of the flight instructor to move his glider from an active runway in accordance with procedures due to his distraction by having a conversation with the air boss, which resulted in the landing glider colliding with the glider on the runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14LA341
- Event ID
- 20140715X03128
- Case number
- ERA14LA341
- 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: f82fce511c843eb0fa7f778e1707a426a5b44faff9b66e60b29ff674c0603e04; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:23:11.509Z.