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Atlas / NTSB / WPR23LA182

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR23LA182

2023-04-02 Marana, Arizona, United States Airport · AZ67 None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard bounced landing in a dust devil.

Factual narrative

**This report was modified on November 15, 2023. Please see the docket for this accident to view the original report.** The pilot of the glider reported that, during the landing flare, a dust devil pushed the glider to the ground, causing a hard landing. The glider bounced and then stalled, making another hard impact on the runway, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage cage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the glider that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Landing flare-Not attained/maintained
  • Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Wind-Dust devil/whirlwind-Response/compensation

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2023_WPR23LA182.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗