WPR19LA181 · Rolladen Schneider LS4 A
Rolladen Schneider LS4 A · Accident: medical event en route
From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0) to Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA181
- 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
Rolladen Schneider LS4 A
- Aircraft type
- Rolladen Schneider LS4
- 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
- N7LR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0), Moriarty, NMTo Moriarty Municipal Airport (0E0), Moriarty, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 38 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 · 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
- Medical event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A pilot departed in a single-seat glider for a personal flight near mountainous terrain. The flight was uneventful until shortly after the pilot reversed course back to the destination. Shortly thereafter, the pilot made a 90° turn toward open terrain and began a descent. The descent was initially shallow but increased to about 1,000 ft per minute during the turn. After the turn was completed, the glider maintained a steady course heading. The ground speed initially increased during the descent but was noticeably decreased before the landing. A crash landing was accomplished in an open field and the glider came to rest upright in heavy vegetation and sustained minor damage. The deceased pilot was found strapped in his seat with the canopy closed and was observed to have sustained only minor external injures. Additionally, the glider’s landing gear was extended.
There were no anomalies noted in recorded data from the accident flight indicating abnormal operation of the glider. Further, examination of the airframe failed to reveal any anomalies with the airframe that would have precluded normal operation.
The medical examiner attributed the cause of death to natural causes due to a cardiac event.
Probable cause
An in-flight cardiac event which necessitated an emergency landing, and which the pilot succumbed to.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA181
- Event ID
- 20190630X84751
- Case number
- WPR19LA181
- 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, cause areas. 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: cb9b78d97e75cf1dd2d77afedbecda72317dcdbfb6b93a6a8508f568532e67ac; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:00:57.007Z.