WPR22LA223 · DG Flugzeugbau Gmbh DG 1000S
DG Flugzeugbau Gmbh DG 1000S · Accident: loss of lift en route
From Methow Valley State Airport (S52) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA223
- 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
DG Flugzeugbau Gmbh DG 1000S
- Aircraft type
- DG 1000
- 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
- N767SS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Methow Valley State Airport (S52), Methow, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2003)
- 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
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported he was soaring when he penetrated two areas of “heavy sink” before reaching the final wave lift of the flight that took him to 16,500 ft. When he left the wave lift the glider began to sink and he quickly focused on regaining lift and did not think about the final glide back to the departure airport. The pilot subsequently overflew a suitable alternative airport as he continued to search for lift while the glider continued to sink at about 1,000 ft per minute. The pilot eventually maneuvered into a position where his best option was to land in a lake when he could not find sufficient lift or return to an airport. Both wings were substantially damaged when the pilot landed in the lake. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures 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. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to overfly a suitable landing site which resulted in an off-field landing in a lake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA223
- Event ID
- 20220623105314
- Case number
- WPR22LA223
- 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: a4a2f6e46f8026d5afea7f2411c56b972efbdd054d20eedc9ba68c0658aa744f; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:22:13.207Z.