• What does student pilot mean?
• What was the pilot’s rating? (H1 or H2 or something else?)
• What kind of glider was being flown?
• What launch was used?
• How long was the pilot in the air?
• How many high-altitude solo flights did the student pilot have before this flight that ended in a crash?
• Why was the pilot too high to land at the LZ?
  • Was the setup too high?
  • Should the pilot have noticed they were too high while on base leg or early in the final approach?
  • Did the pilot experience lift during base leg or final approach?
    • If so, when did that lift occur?
    • How and when could the pilot have corrected for for that lift?
  • How high was the pilot on their base leg?
  • What was the pilots altitude and position relative to the training hill when the pilot turned on final approach?

We must probe deeper into these accidents if we expect to learn something.

David, I really appreciate your efforts and I am sorry to hear that no one is speaking up.

This is pure speculation but maybe it will remind some of us how to avoid getting into desperate situations that cause mistakes and crashes. It is possible that this pilot’s approach was high from the very beginning. We should all have visual cues that tell us if we are coming in high or low and we should have worked out options for correcting altitude problems before we get to the final leg of an approach. If you use consistently use the training hill to truly assess approach altitude and glide it will not take long before you learn to recognize altitude issues really early in your approach. Early recognition changes a potential accident into a slightly modified approach pattern.