106. The Stuck Stick Glider Emergency with Terry Fagg

In this episode of I Learned About Flying From That, host Rob Reider speaks with Terry Fagg from Queensland, Australia, who shares a compelling story about a significant equipment failure during a solo glider flight in 1979. Terry was just 15 years old at the time, with about 30 total flying hours.

He was flying an ASW15, a high-performance competition glider known for being state-of-the-art but also having some quirks that made it "not real easy to fly". While climbing to altitude in a strong thermal, Terry noticed the stick was progressively getting further forward until it became stuck full forward. This left him unable to push forward to descend and flying dangerously close to a stall speed at around 7,000 feet.

Finding himself in "deep deep strife" with virtually no pitch control, Terry spent about two hours at altitude, floating in thermals and figuring out how to fly the glider in this precarious state. Standard stall recovery procedures were impossible with the stick stuck forward, and radio assistance was unavailable.

He managed to return to his gliding club's field and executed a challenging "long low slow circuit," making a difficult landing by basically "flopping in" close to the ground. Initially criticized by the duty instructor for his landing, the severity of the emergency was revealed when, while examining the stick, the damaged elevator link strut – a metal control rod that had failed due to fatigue – finally snapped off completely, showing the elevator was no longer connected.

Terry later learned that he was the only person known to have successfully landed an ASW15 with this specific failure; other instances had resulted in serious crashes. The incident profoundly taught him at a young age that flying, despite being enjoyable, is also a "dangerous business" where unexpected events can occur. He learned the critical importance of trusting his gut feeling when something feels wrong and adhering to aircraft manual procedures.

This episode is brought to you by Avemco Insurance.