CEN21LA396 · Monnett MONI
Monnett MONI · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA396
- 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
- 0
- 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
Monnett MONI
- Aircraft type
- Monnett MONI
- 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
- N983JV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 35 years (built 1986)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 control in flight
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was departing in the motorglider when the accident occurred. A witness stated that the glider used about 3/4 of the 2,580-ft-long runway to become airborne. As the glider climbed, it entered an aerodynamic stall and spin, and subsequently impacted terrain. Security camera footage showed the glider impact the ground in a near-vertical, nose-low attitude in a counterclockwise spin. The glider sustained substantial damage to the right wing and fuselage. An examination of the glider did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operations. The glider’s maintenance history could not be determined. The glider had been deregistered about 8 years before the accident. The student pilot’s logbook was not located, and neither his total flight experience nor experience in the accident glider could be determined. Although the circumstances of the accident are consistent with an aerodynamic stall/spin and loss of control, the reason for the loss of control could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
An aerodynamic stall/spin and loss of control 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 CEN21LA396
- Event ID
- 20210907103799
- Case number
- CEN21LA396
- 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: 820bef384920e955f4963d6e120baabce406d68e5dfff8f5cfc60684608fdb74; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:33:51.142Z.