ERA21LA242 · LET L-23 SUPER BLANIK
Brokenstraw Soaring Club LET L-23 SUPER BLANIK · Accident: hard landing
From Brokenstraw Airport (P15) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA242
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
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
- N912B
- Operator
- Brokenstraw Soaring Club
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brokenstraw Airport (P15), Pittsfield, PATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1992)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 student pilot had completed a training flight to pattern altitude just prior to the accident flight with his flight instructor. After that flight, the glider was towed to 3,000 feet above ground level and released from the tow rope so the student pilot could get some solo practice. The total duration of the solo flight was approximately 1.5 hours. Nothing unusual occurred with the flight until the student pilot turned on to the final leg of the traffic pattern for landing. The glider descended quicker than usual as the student pilot had the airbrakes (wing spoilers) extended. The pilot also stated that developed a leg cramp in his right leg on final approach. The pilot subsequently landed the glider “hard” and after touchdown, the pilot lost directional control. The glider then veered off the left side of the runway, struck a runway light and a drainage culvert with the right wing leading edge and lower airbrake, and then struck a taxiway light with the left wing. The glider’s right wing and fuselage were substantially damaged.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing and loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA242
- Event ID
- 20210609103234
- Case number
- ERA21LA242
- 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: fcafb8c71a6f14419f375eaa384afd0e19c1f3252977a699f0830298b0a4c256; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:08:40.553Z.