How safe/unsafe is glider flying?

LJS1993 said:
Hey gentlemen what about those "motorized gliders"? I'm sure there is a specific name for the type but how has that technology come along?
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Three types:

'Touring Motorgliders' that are basically 2 seat powered aircraft with a glide ratio better than 1:20. In most of the european countries, they can be flown with a glider license with endorsement off a gliderport (which opens up more airfields). Performance is similar to a 152 or LSA, except for the very good glide ratio after an engine out. A very economical way to enjoy aviation while burning 4gph of mogas. In the US, the hurdles for entry into powered flight are lower, less incentive to fly motorgliders. As you can fly them without a medical, the only folks I have seen here are older guys who either can't get a medical or are sick putting up with the FAAs hoops.

'Self launch' gliders that are competition single or twin gliders with a retractable engine of somewhere around 50hp mounted behind the wing-root in the fuselage tube. Most are high-performance gliders with glide ratios 1:42 and better. The neat thing is that you can launch without having to rely on a tow pilot and wing-walker. While it is helpful to have a second person for ground-handling with some physical strength and skill you can make glider flying a one-man show.

'Assist' Similar to the self-launch, except that the engine is a 30hp two-stroke. The glider has to be launched with aero-tow or winch and the engine is strictly a crutch to get home if the thermals susbside earlier than anticipated.

Well, and then there is the Stemme S10 which is a combination of the first two categories.

Also, some of the recent entries in the touring motorglider market (Lambada, Ximango) are a lot better on the glider side than some of the earlier stick+fabric designs. While they are still no comparison to a current design single purpose glider, it is possible to thermal or ridge fly with them.
 
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VA Aviator said:
I'm assuming glider landing gear is pretty tough... landing a tricycle gear aircraft in a random field is a gopher hole away from an accident. Guessing gliders handle rough fields a bit better?
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I've done lot's of off fields in racing sailplanes (single place, composite, single main wheel, skateboard wheel for the tail) I'd say they are about the same but the gliders I flew had zero shock absorption gear.

It's all about weight, speed and tire size. Generally I'd say the glider load on one wheel is a bit less than the typical SEL on 2 (remember the front one isn't to be used except for taxi). Speed is definitely less. The part that gets your attention is the proximity of that unsprung wheel to your soft behind. When you dig one into a tilled field, you stop just about instantly and your butt is about -6" AGL.

On the other hand, a lightly loaded SEL landed properly can survive similar landings without damage for the most part. There are 2 wheels to find holes with and the glider is easier to get slow and smoothly on.

The key point is that cross country sailplanes are designed for such landings and can do a really remarkable job of it.
 
Velocity173 said:
. You just always need to be within gliding distance to the airport.
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Lets change that to, " you just always need to be within gliding distance of somewhere to land safely".

It does not need to be the airport, could be a hay field, cleared crop land, dry lake bed. Any place you or someone you know has checked and deemed safe.

Going cross country is hopping from safe zone to safe zone, always keeping a safe known landing area in glide reach.

Too many glider pilots never get more than one thermal away from their airport. Need to cut that apron string to home. Make sure the trailer is ready, a friend is ready to come get you, do your planning and strike out! 100 miles out and return for a 3.5 hr to 5 or 6 hour flight is the challenge.

Yes, flying gliders, as in everything else from hiking, rock climbing or powered flying, is safe. It's the training and mentoring that tries to keep it safe.
 
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We have a couple club guys who routinely go hundreds of miles/flight, and have yet to land anywhere other than the home airport. I've told them if they do land at another airport just to call and one of us would shuttle the towplane over and give them a relight.

We did have a close call when one guy decided to try his first 'away from the field' flight. He ended up with get-back-itis, passed up a perfectly good airport and perfectly good fields, before he dragged it in right at the threshold.
 
Does landing out in a glider indicate poor piloting skills?
 
MultiMediaWill said:
Does landing out in a glider indicate poor piloting skills?
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It might... but most often it's due to a failure of the pilot's strategy. And even then, it might not be because the strategy was lacking- as 19th century Prussian military strategist Helmuth Van Moltke famously said, "...no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force", usually paraphrased as "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy".
Your strategy could be very sound, based on many hours of soaring experience, or it may be lacking in certain things, like then-newbie LD Jones forgetting that he would have to battle a headwind to get home. :D
Either way, the sky doesn't give a damn about our plans or our forecasts, so even if we consider just about everything, we can't really predict with 100% accuracy what will happen up there.
The best XC glider pilots succeed because they start out with a good strategy, but also because they know how to re-formulate that strategy enroute as hings change. Luck has a lot to do with it, too- most of the best have landed out many times, despite their flying savvy.
 
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MultiMediaWill said:
Does landing out in a glider indicate poor piloting skills?
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I would say, not necessarily.

Some pilots want to make a distance run - just go and see how far you can get. In that case the goal was distance, and the landing just happens to be wherever it is. The piloting skills involve selecting a suitable place, and landing there.

Other pilots, in competitions, are looking for elapsed time around a course. Sometimes they run out of thermal, then run out of altitude. And, again, the skills come into play to find a good landing spot.

Other times, someone just loses track of the winds aloft and can't get back to the airport. That may be a lack of judgment or SA, but might not be poor skills.

There is a real mind shift that happens in transitioning to gliders - you have to understand that landing out might cost you some beer, but that's it. It takes some people a long time to figure that out. That's where poor judgment sets in and get-there-itis can cause an accident.
 
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This is a great thread. I can say one down side of gliders is it's not a solo activity. You typically have to join a club, drive a distance to get to that field, and then plan on spending the day or weekend at the field most of the summer to get your turn to fly, to get your ticket. Winter in some parts of country, forget soaring. Some states only have thermals, no ridge or mountain lift. Powered planes, you open hanger, light the fire and fly. Yes motor gliders exist, but the best ones are near $200,000. It's hard to compare accidents of gliders verses GA powered aircraft, because hours flown are so different. I think both can be safe based on pilot, equipment, conditions and knowing the risks and mitigating or reducing those risks. If you want to take gliding to the a high level and go cross country or fly competitions, it will take a ground crew to chase you. Of course racing cross country will add some risks. Flying in circles over the field is going to get boring. Again a powered airplane is practical, go cross country at will. Gas is expensive but so are tows.

I looked at accidents of gliders over last 18 years. I saw a lot of accidents. Of the accidents a majority were non-fatal (I don't have percentage and I am sure many non-fatal accidents are not reported). The fatal accidents were stalls, in flight breakup, hitting terrain (in mountainous terrain). Tow accidents also were in the mix resulting in stalls or loss of control.
 
tinerj said:
very safe, but boring, boring, boring
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Matter of taste. Gliding is filled with lots of interesting challenges. Personally, I find point A to point B in a Cessna or Cherokee boring.

weilke said:
Now, paragliders, they just have a death-wish. Every one of my acquaintances who got into that activity ended up with a multi-week hospital stay and lots of hardware in either their pelvis, lower back, lower extremities or all of the above.
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Actually, paragliding is statistically about as safe as GA flying.
 
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Glider flying is both fun, and somewhat more risky than other flying. But like all things in aviation, the risk factors are mostly under the pilot's control. In fact even more so in gliders, since there's little chance of a surprise engine outage :p
 
I’d say safe, based on the training and all Id to as far as saw safer than flying a 172 after being trained by a green horn hour builder.

Compared to being overweight, also zero saftey risk
 
ebykowsky said:
No go around, no throttle, and only mother nature for lift... your hobby is what I would consider an emergency... so how safe is it really? How often can you not make it to the runway, and of those times how often does the plane end up damaged or the pilot end up hurt/dead?
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I've only NOT made it back to the airport of intended landing once. But I was really, really close!! Just landed on the edge of a nicely cultivated field....felt like landing on a plush carpet.

Keep in mind most gliders touch down at speeds much slower than most singles. You can put them into some fairly small spaces and they're designed to disassemble for trailering.
 
From this post, Gliders sound pretty cool. It's also one of the things that will make you a better pilot as well.
 
ebykowsky said:
No go around, no throttle, and only mother nature for lift... your hobby is what I would consider an emergency... so how safe is it really? How often can you not make it to the runway, and of those times how often does the plane end up damaged or the pilot end up hurt/dead?
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The Wright brothers accomplished the first POWERED flight in 1903; people had been flying gliders for decades before that.

Bob
 
The farthest from the airport I've gone is maybe 30 miles, but I've had flights over two hours. When thermaling, you will spend more time at the slow-end of the envelope, but your flying will become more controlled, and you will come to a new appreciation of energy management. You'll also stop saying things like, "Every landing is a go around," and "Go arounds are free."
 
ebykowsky said:
No go around, no throttle, and only mother nature for lift... your hobby is what I would consider an emergency
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lol. I used to think that about sailing.. you'd be 10 miles off shore in a 21ft boat with no engine.. and sometimes light wind.. something rewarding though about leaving a harbor and ending up somewhere else totally "for free" using just the wind

ebykowsky said:
How often can you not make it to the runway
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My brother in law flew sailplanes for a bit in med school, he landed out once.. was a non event. The wings come off and they trailer it back

Check out Bruno Vassel's channel, he has a lot of good glider videos, on this one he lands out
 
rottydaddy said:
I dont know how the stats compare between gliders and power, but I'd guess that most glider accidents are directly related to pilot error, or even ground crew mistakes. Launch and approach are the most risky times, but midairs between gaggling gliders are not very unusual (sadly).
Aerotow complicates matters- if either ship has a problem, release has to be quick, and maneuvering clear of each other has to be done right. Also, on takeoff especially, both pilots have to remember how much they can affect each other .
Landing out presents similar risks as the typical engine-out emergency landing, but again, the risk of landing out is pretty manageable by the pilot.

But assuming an off-airport arrival where the glider gets damaged, the occupants have a better chance of walking away. No fire hazard, low approach speeds and descent rates, and in the case of steel tube types like the very stout Schweizers I fly, a structure that will absorb a lot of energy while staying firm in the cockpit area. Those big wings can also be used to bear the initial shock without transferring much energy to the cockpit area.
I'd rather go into trees, rocks, or a house in a 2-33 than anything else I've flown.
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I have been told the Schweizer 2-33 might be the only production aircraft (579 built) to never have a fatal accident.
Actually my NTSB seach showed one Fatal in 1978 due to "PIC - exceeded designed stress limits, Left wing separation in flight" . But out of the 204 accidents in the NTSB records since they started building them in 1965, that is a pretty envious record.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
Clark1961 said:
Them there /delete:gravity/ Thermo Nuclear Fusion (from a distance) driven contraptions are dangerous I say, dangerous! Why ya read 'bout them allatime in the papers...oh....you really don't...

Gliders are as safe as just about anything in the air - take a flight and find out for yourself why but consider the excellent glide ratio and low stall speed...
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fixed that for you..:)
 
I have a little over a 1000 hours in gliders and about 10 off airport landings. So about once every 100 hours. To be fair all but about 2 of them were flying contests where I was flying to a set goal and had a ground crew standing by retrieve me.
Statistically most experts trying to evaluate the numbers seem to agree that hour for hour a glider is a bit more dangerous than General Aviation Flying.
Perhaps even a bit more the airplanes, Glider Risk is mostly what you decide you want it to be. If you never fly out of gliding range of the airport, you shouldn't (no guarantee) ever land anywhere but an airport.
As mentioned the most common serious accidents are Thermalling or ridge flying to low, and Mid-air collisions (why most of us wear parachutes and most carry FLARM devices.)
The disturbing trend this year is most if not all of the fatal accidents have involved very experienced pilots. There is some speculation this might have to do with the fact that the average age of glider pilots is probably past retirement age, but it is not really clear what the root cause for this trend is.
The cool thing about glider is at 2000 feet it can take as long as 10 minutes to glide back to the ground, so you usually have a lot of time to make a plan. At 12,000 feet and it might take up to an hour to glide back down assuming no lift or sink is found.

Brian
CFIIG/ASEL
 
bobmrg said:
The Wright brothers accomplished the first POWERED flight in 1903; people had been flying gliders for decades before that.
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There were other powered craft before the Wrights that "flew," but the Wright Flyer was (quasi) controllable through wing warping, rudder and elevator. But yes, gliders go way back to Lilienthal, etc.
 
No one ever burned to death after crashing. That's a good thing, I guess.
I always enjoyed it.
 
Glad to find this forum. I just took my first ever glider ride this past Wednesday, for only about 15 minutes, 3000 feet. Totally enjoyed it. Did not feel the least fear. I want to learn glider flying. Always wanted to learn to fly a plane, and I heard that glider flying is a good thing to learn before learning to fly with engine planes. Have watched some videos on youtube with great interest.

Shouldn't there be a sub-forum dedicated to glider flying?

Shepherd said:
No one ever burned to death after crashing. That's a good thing, I guess.
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That's what I thought, too. Also, no complicated control system, and no need to learn the many air control code words (is it so?).
 
Regarding accidents: the glider is so dependent on the tow plane that it seems to me some of the worst or most likely accidents would probably be involved with the tow plane. For example:
a. Rope breaking or accidentally detaches before a safe height is reached. (What could you do then?)
b. Rope can't be released, so the glider stays connected to the tow plane. (How would that end?)
c. Cockpit glass broken while in high altitude (What consequence would result from it?)
......

Parachute would be useless if you have never been trained to use it.
 
mumblecanfly said:
Regarding accidents: the glider is so dependent on the tow plane that it seems to me some of the worst or most likely accidents would probably be involved with the tow plane. For example:
a. Rope breaking or accidentally detaches before a safe height is reached. (What could you do then?)
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Land straight ahead.

Also, gliders do not need much altitude to do a teardrop turn to land back on the takeoff runway. A broken tow-rope is an event you train for and anticipate.

b. Rope can't be released, so the glider stays connected to the tow plane. (How would that end?)
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Both glider and tow plane have a release. If the ring gets jammed in the gliders release, the tow plane can release it on their end* and the glider lands with the tow-rope attached.

c. Cockpit glass broken while in high altitude (What consequence would result from it?)
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It would get very drafty in the cockpit and the performance of the glider would suffer. This has not been a major issue. The canopy is made from plexi and even if it cracked, its not like a tempered glass window that shatters in a thousand pieces. There would just be a crack that the pilot can stare at for the next hour and wonder how many weeks it will take to get the replacement shipped from Germany/Slovenia/South Africa/Poland.

Parachute would be useless if you have never been trained to use it.
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Not really. Many of the parachutes worn in gliders are automatic with a lanyard attached to the plane that deploys the chute within a couple of 100ft. You jump out, the parachute opens and you are basically cargo until you hit the trees/mountains/alfalfa fields below. You may get hurt, but it beats the alternative.
They exist to give the pilot an option for the uncommon event of a midair collision or for a control system malfunction that doesn't allow a safe landing.




* or cut it with a little guillotine device in the case of a internal drum style tow system
 
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fly4usa said:
This is a great thread. I can say one down side of gliders is it's not a solo activity. You typically have to join a club,
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It's definitely not a solo activity. You always need a tow plane. :eek:
 
Will a glider be safe when being hit by birds? Probably?
 
mumblecanfly said:
Shouldn't there be a sub-forum dedicated to glider flying?
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Only for biplane gliders...
PP-static1.jpg
 
I've been conservative when venturing away from the gliderport. I'll ensure I'm within glide range of the landable field ahead before going beyond glide range of the field behind. I haven't had to land out yet although the closest was 600 agl on base leg at an uncontrolled airport before picking up a thermal and climbing out.
 
mumblecanfly said:
It's definitely not a solo activity. You always need a tow plane. :eek:
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You can have your cake, and eat it, too, with a Stemme S12 motor glider. You can fly it cross-country, you can stow the propeller and soar (53:1!!!!), and it's a tail-dragger retractable that requires no medical! (Bring $350K or so, however.)
 
Since I am a 110% newbie... Is there a monitor/indicator in the control system of a glider that tells you about the changing atmosphere (air current, thermal, etc.) surrounding the glider? Could there be a sudden change of the atmosphere that causes the glider to fall unexpectedly? (am thinking about the mystery about some accidents by highly experienced pilots in good weather condition)
 
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