WPR24LA274 · Burkhart Grob Flugzeugbau G103 TWIN ASTIR
Silverado Soaring Burkhart Grob Flugzeugbau G103 TWIN ASTIR · Accident: loss of lift en route
From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA274
- 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 Flugzeugbau G103 TWIN ASTIR
- Aircraft type
- Grob G103
- 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
- N125CC
- Operator
- Silverado Soaring
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), Minden, NVTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1982)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The glider was launched by aerotow and released about 5 miles from the departure airport. After climbing to about 10,400 ft msl, the pilot flew the glider towards an adjacent peak, however while enroute the glider encountered sink and descended. Rather than fly back towards the sinking air, the pilot began to track towards another peak in anticipation of finding lifting air, in an area where he had been successful in the past. However, the glider continued to descend so he turned back towards the departure airport. The headwinds were significant, and by the time the glider had sunk to 1,000 ft above ground level, the airport was no longer in site, so he elected to perform an off-field landing on a dirt road. During the landing roll the left wing struck a raised rock, which resulted in substantial damage to the left wing and fuselage. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The glider’s encounter with atmospheric conditions where the lift was not sufficient to maintain flight and a subsequent collision with an obstacle during an off-field landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA274
- Event ID
- 20240812194914
- Case number
- WPR24LA274
- 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: 601c6463fcc39b5b549ebad9200534f4d2359c10611140ffc638a10c2d893571; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:09:49.632Z.