What happened
On July 21, 2016, a student pilot was conducting his first solo flight in a Grob G103 Twin Astir, registration F-CFKK, at the Buno-Bonnevaux airfield. After completing several successful training flights and emergency procedure exercises earlier in the day, the pilot was authorized to fly solo.
During the return from a local flight, the pilot approached runway 28. While on short final, the pilot became preoccupied with correcting the aircraft's alignment, as the glider had drifted toward the southern edge of the runway. In the process of correcting the axis, the pilot failed to perform the necessary flare. This resulted in the glider bouncing approximately three meters off the ground with a high pitch attitude. Following the bounce, the aircraft struck the unpaved surface hard on the nose wheel, causing the tail section to break off and resulting in the destruction of the aircraft. The pilot sustained slight injuries.
The investigation
The BEA examined the flight sequence, the pilot's training history, and the instructor's observations. The investigation established that the student pilot had completed 257 hours of dual instruction and had been cleared for solo flight following successful cable-release simulations and several instructional flights that day.
Witness accounts from both the pilot and the instructor confirmed that the pilot was focused on maintaining the runway centerline during the final approach. The instructor noted that after the initial bounce, they had instructed the pilot to push the stick forward to regain airspeed for a second landing attempt, but a second failure to flare occurred before the final impact.