Soaring Safety Foundation

The Soaring Safety Foundation (SSF) is the Training and Safety arm of the Soaring Society of America (SSA). Our mission is to provide instructors and pilots with the tools needed to teach/learn both the stick & rudder skills and the Aeronautical Decision Making skills needed to safely fly a glider. We also provide information and analysis of incident and accident trends in order to develop better training tools.

Data collected from Open Glider Network (OGN) as of Monday March 24, 2025

Duration	Gliders	Flights	Hours
Year to Date	1651	8512	8491.77
Last 7 Days	296	1192	1095.87

This table shows the number of individual gliders that recorded a flight in the OGN tracking system ant the number of flights/hours those gliders flew.

Flight Training
Videos and Scenario Database

These videos are introductory in nature and are geared to learning to soar, or a new soaring skill.

Flight Safety
Videos and Incident Database

These videos are safety oriented and appropriate for glider pilots of any skill level.

Visit the Soaring Safety Foundation's Youtube Channel
The SSA's YouTube Video Playlist

The Soaring Incident Database is now available to help pilots, safety officers, clubs, and commercial operators develop new programs that can help prevent incidents from becoming major accidents. See more incidents by searching the database or register a new incident.

Region	Pilot Certificate	Pilot Injuries	Passenger Injuries	Type of Flight	Launch Method	Type of Aircraft
East	Private			Local		Twin Astir
Incident Activity	Damage to Aircraft	Damage to Canopy	Incident Date	Incident Time	Weather	SSA Member
GroundHandling	None		2014-08-23	1600-1800	Not a Factor	Yes
Incident Description	The runway at our field has a 1 deg slope that results in taking off downhill and landing uphill. On this particular afternoon the pilot landed the Twin Astir on the grass runway and stopped after traveling about 70% of the runway length. This required the use of a car and tow-rope to move the glider back to the hanger. After towing the glider across the landing runway, the hard-surface take-off runway and the grass tow-plane landing area the glider arrived at the sloped hard-surface taxiway. The wing walker then maneuvered the glider onto the taxiway and suddenly found the glider rolling downhill towards the car. Fortunately the tow-rope was long enough and the wingtip did not strike the car as the glider swung off the taxiway when the wing walker stopped and the glider rolled off the side of the taxiway.
Other Comments	A better briefing on when to disconnect the glider and use the normal no-car ground handling procedure would have prevented this incident