The glider's encounter with insufficient atmospheric lift conditions where the lift was not sufficient to maintain soaring flight, which resulted in an off-airport landing.
— NTSB Determination
The pilot of the glider reported that during a long distance ridgeline soaring flight, he encountered a loss of lift and dropped below the ridgeline. Unable to find another updraft, he was forced to land in an open field, with tall grass. As the glider touched down, the landing gear struck a large hole that was concealed by the grass, shearing off the landing gear and causing a ground loop when the left wing struck the ground. The fuselage and tail were substantially damaged.
Loading the flight search…
Pick an aircraft model — Boeing 737, Airbus A320, A380, Boeing 787 Dreamliner and more — enter your origin airport, and FlightFinder shows every route that plane flies from there with live fares.
We support Boeing 737/747/757/767/777/787, the full Airbus A220/A319/A320/A321/A330/A340/A350/A380 family, Embraer E170/E175/E190/E195, Bombardier CRJ and Dash 8, and the ATR 42/72 turboprops.
Search and schedules are free. Pro ($4.99/month, $39/year, or $99 one-time lifetime) unlocks the enriched flight card — on-time stats, CO₂ per passenger, amenities, live gate & weather — plus My Trips with push alerts.
Live schedules come from Amadeus, AeroDataBox and Travelpayouts. Observed routes (which aircraft actually flew a given city pair) are crowdsourced from adsb.lol ADS-B data under the Open Database License.