ERA18FA128 · S.Z.D. SZD 48 JANTAR STD 2 1
S.Z.D. SZD 48 JANTAR STD 2 1 · Accident: glider tow event en route
From La Belle Municipal Airport (X14) to La Belle Municipal Airport (X14)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18FA128
- 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
S.Z.D. SZD 48 JANTAR STD 2 1
- Aircraft type
- S SZD-48
- 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
- N456RM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Belle Municipal Airport (X14), LaBelle, FLTo La Belle Municipal Airport (X14), LaBelle, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1981)
- 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 · climb to 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
- Glider tow event
- 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 private pilot assembled his glider for a local flight, and a tow rope from a tow airplane was attached to the glider. According to the tow pilot, the pilot requested to be towed to 3,000 ft above field elevation before release. During the climb out, when the glider was about 200 ft above ground level (agl), the tow pilot noticed that the tow rope had a lot more slack than normal and that the glider was moving around a lot more than usual. The tow pilot started a shallow turn to the right to keep the airplane upwind and "take up the slack in the tow rope," but, during this maneuver, the slack remained in the line. The tow pilot stated that, at 400 ft agl, the glider encountered a thermal and began to climb rapidly while lifting the tail of the tow airplane. The glider released from the tow rope, and the tow pilot continued in straight ahead in level flight to avoid the glider. The tow pilot subsequently noticed that the glider was about 200 ft below the tow airplane in a spin. The glider continued to spin until it impacted the ground.
A review of the data retrieved from the onboard flight data recorder revealed that, when the glider reached an altitude of 400 ft agl, its airspeed was 75 knots. The glider's altitude continued to increase as its airspeed began to decrease. The glider reached a maximum altitude of 485 ft before descending to 472 ft about 6 seconds later. At that time, the airspeed reached its lowest recorded speed, about 55 knots. No other information for the flight was recorded.
Although the glider's lowest recorded speed was above its stall speed, it is possible that the glider entered an inadvertent stall based on the tow pilot's observations of the glider spinning and descending until impact; however, the investigation could not determine the reason for the loss of control.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the glider for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18FA128
- Event ID
- 20180416X80005
- Case number
- ERA18FA128
- 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: 3fbfccb734deb6b0b429919428ae0ff2427948f595d827d04e087234a5964647; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:39:16.321Z.