ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 146762
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| Date: | Saturday 17 April 1999 |
| Time: | 15:00 |
| Type: |  Schleicher ASK 21 |
| Owner/operator: | London Gliding Club |
| Registration: | BGA 3705 |
| MSN: | 21150 |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 2 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Category: | Accident |
| Location: | Northall, Edlesborough, Buckinghamshire -
 United Kingdom
|
| Phase: | En route |
| Nature: | Private |
| Departure airport: | London Gliding Club, Dunstable Downs, Bedfordshire |
| London Gliding Club, Dunstable Downs, Bedfordshire | |
| Investigating agency: | AAIB |
| Confidence Rating: |  Accident investigation report completed and information captured |
Schleicher ASK 21 glider (BGA3705/'GBP') destroyed 17 April 1999 by a very powerful lightning strike, both pilot and passenger bailed out and parachuted to safety. Pilot broke ankle on landing, passenger (Graeme Cooper) landed on the roof of a disused petrol station. See the full story on the link #2) below. The incident was also the subject of an AAIB Investigation (see link #1), and the following is an extract from the investigation report:
"The glider was operating from a gliding site at Dunstable, Bedfordshire, and was being used for a one day training course. At the time of the accident the glider was undertaking the last intended flight of the day for one of two students on that course. In accordance with the policy of the gliding club, both the instructor and student were wearing parachutes and the instructor had briefed his student on the use of his parachute and how to abandon the glider should this be necessary.
Thunderstorm activity had been forecast for the area and although a large area of bad weather could be seen to the north of the airfield from which the glider was operating, it was advancing only very slowly towards the local flying area. Heavy falls of rain and wet snow could be seen beneath the advancing cloud line.
The glider had been towed to 2,200 feet agl and for approximately one hour had been soaring at heights up to 4,000 feet in the area between Leighton Buzzard and Bletchley. For the last part of the flight, the glider returned towards the airfield and was flying along the front edge of this large area of cloud, approximately 500 feet above its base, where the air was rising at 2 to 3 kt. The pilot reported that he was in clear smooth air and close to the cloud. Shortly before the accident, other gliders in the area had been returning to the airfield in view of the approaching bad weather. At a local time of approximately 1709 hrs, after the glider had climbed back towards 3,000 feet, the instructor also decided to return to the airfield ahead of the approaching weather and therefore turned away from the cloud. A short time later when he estimated that his course had diverged from the cloud line by some 30°, and they were approximately 2,500 feet agl (some 300 feet above the cloud base), at an estimated 800 yards from the cloud in clear air and flying at a speed of some 80 kt, the glider was struck by lightning and large sections of its airframe disintegrated.
From that moment, the instructor later stated that his memory was not particularly clear. He remembered hearing a 'very loud bang' and then 'feeling very draughty'; he also believed that he may have momentarily lost consciousness. On recovering, he felt dazed and remembered slowly becoming aware that 'something was seriously amiss' and that this was 'a real emergency requiring unpleasant and decisive action'. He was able to shout to his student in the front cockpit two or three times to undo his straps and abandon the glider but, owing to some impairment of his hearing, the student was unable to hear him clearly. The student had already decided to abandon the glider and, after he had departed, the instructor followed but was surprised when he realised that he had not had to jettison his cockpit canopy. It was estimated that both parachutes had successfully inflated by 1,800 feet agl.
The lightning strike was only witnessed by a few people in the area, but many more saw its immediate aftermath with large items of slowly falling debris, two inflated parachutes, the fuselage descending vertically at high speed and a ball of smoke and fine debris next to the cloud where the glider had been struck. All witnesses reported that the flash of lightning occurred simultaneously with an extremely 'loud crack' and many of these, including one police officer in the centre of the nearby town (Dunstable), expressed the view that it was probably the loudest sound they could remember hearing. It was also recollected by many witnesses that this had been the first lightning flash of a series of discharges which had then occurred in that area over a period of some 15 minutes.
Apart from the damage to the hearing of both occupants, 'sooting' to the upper part of the instructor's jacket, parachute pack and the hair on the back of his head, neither suffered any major injuries as a result of the lightning strike. The student pilot landed on the roof of a disused petrol station adjacent to a busy road in the village of Northall, but escaped major injury. The instructor descended into a nearby field and suffered a broken ankle upon landing. The rescue services were quickly on the scene and both occupants were taken to hospital; the student pilot was allowed to return home later that evening and the instructor was released four days later after surgery to his ankle"
=Damage sustained to airframe=
Per the above AAIB Report "Aircraft Destroyed". The airframe was originally built and registered as BGA 2890, then delivered on 29 March 1983 as a Schleicher Vanguard TX.1, with military markings as ZD650.
The reported crash location of Northall is a hamlet in the civil parish of Edlesborough, in Buckinghamshire, England, situated halfway between Edlesborough and Billington, Bedfordshire. Note that most published sources (including the AAIB Report) give the crash location as "Bedfordshire" as it is our miles west of the town of Dunstable, eight miles west of the major town of Luton, and 32 miles north-west of London. Northall lies just south-west of the Bedfordshire border. Northall falls within the district council of Aylesbury Vale, under the county council of Buckinghamshire.
Accident investigation:
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Sources:
1. AAIB: https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/schleicher-ask-21-two-seat-glider-17-april-1999
2. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnx0aGViaWc0MHJlYWNoZm9ydGhlc2tpZXNhZ2FpbnxneDo1NzMyZmZkOTVkOTcwZDFj
3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44687239
4. http://www.rcawsey.co.uk/ask21.htm
5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/558095.stm
6. http://www.rcawsey.co.uk/bga3705.jpg
7. http://www.ukserials.com/results.php?serial=ZD
8. https://www.damninteresting.com/the-power-of-positive-lightning/
9. https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/bga-sg-archive/Sailplane+&+Gliding+1955+to+2000+-+274+mags+9.32GB/volume_50_no.4_august_september_1999.pdf p.5
10. https://www.newscientist.com/letter/mg18625030-200-lightning-risk/
11. https://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=94460
12. https://www.pprune.org/medical-health/40920-lightning-strike-crew-injuries.html
13. https://flightsafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/asw_jun10_p18-23.pdf
14. https://www.getthedata.com/northall/where-is-northall
15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northall
Media:
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 16-Jul-2012 13:52 | Graeme Cooper | Added |
| 16-Jul-2012 14:07 | Anon. | Updated [Source] |
| 16-Jul-2012 14:08 | harro | Updated [Embed code] |
| 17-Nov-2017 13:45 | harro | Updated [Source, Embed code] |
| 16-Sep-2022 13:07 | Dr. John Smith | Updated [Cn, Location, Departure airport, Destination airport, Source, Embed code, Narrative, Category] |
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