WPR21LA290 · Burkhart Grob G 103 TWIN II
Utah Soaring Association Burkhart Grob G 103 TWIN II · Accident: loss of lift en route
From J. Randy McKnight Nephi Municipal Airport (U14) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR21LA290
- 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
Burkhart Grob G 103 TWIN II
- Aircraft type
- Grob G-103
- 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
- N4446Y
- Operator
- Utah Soaring Association
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From J. Randy McKnight Nephi Municipal Airport (U14), Nephi, UTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1983)
- 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
- 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
- Loss of lift
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during the flight, the glider encountered insufficient lift to maintain flight and he decided to land off airport. He performed a high recon of the area and selected a landing site on the north side of a local reservoir, along the shoreline. While on downwind for the intended landing area, he did not see any obstacles, and performed a teardrop turn to final. The glider touched down in the approximate area he intended to, however, during landing roll, the glider collided with a barbed wire fence and sustained substantial damage to the right wing and the rear canopy. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the glider that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The glider’s encounter with atmospheric conditions where the lift was not sufficient to maintain flight which resulted in an off-airport landing and a collision with a fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR21LA290
- Event ID
- 20210727103567
- Case number
- WPR21LA290
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, coordinates, 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: 929afbffd238f0ec6fd320f10a15a9ca767dcad6941847c0fd5091f0451f8f40; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:20:14.569Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. U14 is Nephi Municipal Airport at Nephi, Utah; the city name is misspelled 'Nehi' in the record.