ERA26LA199 · Alexander Schleicher Gmbh & Co ASW 27-18
Alexander Schleicher Gmbh & Co ASW 27-18 · Accident: loss of lift en route
From Perry International Airport (SC95) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA199
- 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
Alexander Schleicher Gmbh & Co ASW 27-18
- Aircraft type
- Schleicher ASW-27
- 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
- N27CU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perry International Airport (SC95), Perry, SCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 2010)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The glider pilot reported that he was participating in a racing competition. He was able to find thermals up to 7,000 ft mean sea level (msl) and later could not climb higher than 4,500 ft msl. At that time, the glider was about 20 miles from his intended destination, which the pilot thought he could reach; however, the glider subsequently encountered a strong sink, and he could not find any more thermals. Unable to glide to an airport, he attempted a forced landing to a field. During the forced landing, the left wing contacted a swale in the middle of the field. The glider spun, the tailboom also contacted the swale and separated, and the glider came to rest upright. The pilot also reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the glider that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The glider pilot’s encounter with a strong sink/loss of lift, which resulted in a forced landing to unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA199
- Event ID
- 20260507202950
- Case number
- ERA26LA199
- 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: 7df568f8746698fcbb29a7714bef34d03ee5f36caf4af2f7a24fd1abcffc0d8c; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:24:42.363Z.