ANC04CA108 · Bailey Merlin GT
Bailey Merlin GT · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN) to Kenai, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04CA108
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bailey Merlin GT
- Aircraft type
- Bailey MERLIN GT
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N354B
- Operator
- Marvin Bailey
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenai Municipal Airport (PAEN), Kenai, AKTo Kenai, AK
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · landing roll
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Loss of control on ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot of the experimental airplane elected to land with a quartering tailwind to meld in with traffic. He said the airplane bounced on the initial touchdown, and upon touching down the second time, a gust of wind from the left and behind, lifted the left wing and the airplane became airborne. He applied full power to abort the landing, but the airplane settled and impacted the runway, collapsing the landing gear and damaging the left wing.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind conditions during the landing roll, which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain during the subsequent aborted landing. A factor associated with the accident was a gusty wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04CA108
- Event ID
- 20041005X01576
- Case number
- ANC04CA108
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-09-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 969513ee56c6ba3c7f36d0ed578a8969239f8646d95d54ebb7e65994d022dfa8; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:43:47.129Z.