WPR25FA232 · Schleicher ASW27-18
Schleicher ASW27-18 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Morgan County Airport (42U) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25FA232
- 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
- Ongoing
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- 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
Schleicher ASW27-18
- Aircraft type
- Schleicher ASW27
- 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
- N929JK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Morgan County Airport (42U), Morgan, UTTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 1, 2025, about 1358 mountain daylight time, a Schleicher ASW27-18, N929JK, was involved in an accident near Morgan, Utah. The pilot was fatally injured. The glider was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight.
A Rocky Mountain Soaring club representative reported that he and another member of the soaring club were going to fly a two-seat glider and join the accident pilot who was flying in a single-seat glider. The intent of the accident flight was for the 2 gliders to be towed from the Morgan County Airport (42U), Morgan, Utah, and be released in the vicinity of Big Mahogany Mountain (located about 3 ½ miles southeast of 42U). The accident glider was the first to be towed out and released near the mountain.
The tow airplane returned to the airport and towed the second glider to the mountain. Once in the area of Big Mahogany Mountain the pilots of the second glider did not see the accident glider; they circled the area looking for the accident glider and were not able to contact the accident pilot via radio or see it on their radio-based collision avoidance system – Flight alARM (FLARM). A search of the area by the second glider revealed white smoke and glider debris on the west facing side of Big Mahogany Mountain. The pilot of the second glider performed a 360° turn and when they viewed the accident site again, the accident glider was engulfed in flames. The second glider alerted first responders to the accident location and returned to 42U. The pilots of the second glider reported that there were no radio calls made by the accident pilot following the release of the glider from the tow airplane.
Examination of the accident site revealed that the glider impacted the west facing side of a mountain at an elevation of 6,625 ft mean sea level (msl). The accident site was on a slope of about 35 – 40° and consisted of loose shale, scrub brush, and trees. The glider was mostly consumed by the postcrash fire. The wreckage was recovered to a secure facility for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25FA232
- Event ID
- 20250802200683
- Case number
- WPR25FA232
- 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. 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: 133f1311fcc75eaa1da62b24917055bb9978f0b55a17183ca7b10d2437dbec29; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:07:35.215Z.