ERA22LA326 · Schweizer SGS 2-33A
Soaring Society of Dayton Schweizer SGS 2-33A · Accident: off-field or emergency landing while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA326
- 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
Schweizer SGS 2-33A
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer SGS-2
- 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
- N3616Q
- Operator
- Soaring Society of Dayton
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 41 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Off-field or emergency 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
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, who held a private pilot certificate with an airplane single-engine land rating, was transitioning to flying gliders and had about 27 hours of glider flying experience at the time of the accident. On the afternoon of the accident flight he had completed two instructional flights before being signed off for his first solo flight. After departing on the solo flight, the pilot released the glider from the tow airplane at the planned altitude of 2,000 ft above ground level (agl). The pilot knew he was about 2 miles from the departure airport, but he was having difficulty locating the turf runway due to the glare of the setting sun. After descending to about 1,100 ft agl, and still not being able to locate the runway, he selected a corn field for an off-airport landing. The glider’s fuselage and right wing were substantially damaged during the subsequent landing. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures of the glider that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of situational awareness (geographic position), which resulted in his inability to locate the intended landing runway and his decision to perform an off-airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA326
- Event ID
- 20220720105535
- Case number
- ERA22LA326
- 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, 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: e39425e8c58616216078e9d86e4df1527f05692dd89a27465dbcf59c4a1fcd62; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:29:18.261Z.