On Friday, September 27, 2019 at 4:16:17 PM UTC-7, Papa3 wrote:
On Thursday, September 26, 2019 at 8:40:34 PM UTC-4, Charles Longley wrote:
How many wing failures have composite gliders had over the years?

A fair number, but I can't think of any that were due to normal flight. For example, at least 1 or 2 Slingsby Vegas came apart, but I believe both of those were due to exceeding design limits. Same for a Zuni. A fair number of others came apart due to flutter.

P3

P3 - I was the owner of one of the Vegas that crashed (N4312B, in 1987 in Hemet) - the root cause was elevator flutter resulting in failure of the elevator linkage. No overspeed, no structural failure, just flutter followed by loss of pitch control causing the pilot to bail out (unfortunately at low altitude, with serious injuries).

Cheers,

Barry