WPR16FA160 · AMS Flight CARAT A
AMS Flight CARAT A · Accident en route
From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV) to Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's date. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16FA160
- 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
AMS Flight CARAT A
- Aircraft type
- Ams Flight CARAT
- 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
- N11DY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NVTo Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot departed in the motor glider in day visual meteorological conditions and transmitted over the airport's common traffic advisory frequency that he would be conducting a "right turn out" after takeoff. About 6 minutes later, the pilot transmitted that he was 4 miles east of the airport and climbing. No further radio transmissions were received from the glider. Data from an onboard GPS unit indicated that, after departing, the glider proceeded east-northeast for several minutes, then conducted several climbing 360° turns consistent with circling in thermal activity up to a GPS altitude of about 8,500 ft. The glider then assumed a southerly heading and continued on that heading for about 1 minute before the data ended in the vicinity of the accident site.
The wreckage was oriented on a northerly heading in rocky, mountainous terrain at an elevation of about 6,050 ft mean sea level about 7 nautical miles east-northeast of the departure airport. Although it came to rest near powerlines, there was no apparent indication that the glider contacted the lines before impacting terrain. Postaccident examination indicated that the glider was configured for gliding with the engine off and the propeller and landing gear stowed at the time of impact. Examination of the airframe and engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. An autopsy and toxicology testing of the pilot and did not provide any evidence of physiological impairment or incapacitation. The investigation was unable to determine why the glider impacted terrain.
Probable cause
Impact with terrain for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16FA160
- Event ID
- 20160805X51255
- Case number
- WPR16FA160
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7dae84889ab06dc5bffa524d980cbf0a6cfac1c422e193de907047ef7881587f; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:58:01.574Z.