DCA10FA066 · Boeing B75N1
Boeing B75N1 · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF) to DCA · Arlington, VA
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA10FA066
- 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
Boeing B75N1
- Aircraft type
- Boeing B75
- 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
- N27WE
- Operator
- Truschel Michael A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Washington Manassas Harry P. Davis Field (HEF), Manassas, VATo DCA · Arlington, VA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, as he entered the flare to land at an airspeed of about 70 miles per hour, he planned to keep the airplane’s tail in the air and roll farther down the runway to allow more room for the following airplanes in his formation. He stated that, when the wheels touched the runway, he inadvertently applied the wheel brakes via the rudder pedals, which was evident by the skid marks found on the runway. (Pressing forward on the tops of the rudder pedals activates the main wheel brakes.) The pilot’s use of the brakes while touching down at high speed in this type of airplane, which has a high center of gravity and a tail wheel, caused it to flip over onto the top wing and the vertical stabilizer and rudder. Although the pilot had 875 total flight hours, including 190 hours in Stearman airplanes, he stated that he had seldom used the brakes in over 600 landings in the accident airplane. Therefore, the pilot was not familiar with the feel and effectiveness of the airplane’s wheel brakes.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent use of the wheel brakes at high speed during the touchdown phase of the landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of familiarity with the feel and effectiveness of the airplane’s wheel brakes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DCA10FA066
- Event ID
- 20100608X14601
- Case number
- DCA10FA066
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7ccd3d0f5b74e6300774e40eeaf492d74a1f67e6abcfdb8614da802012438a4f; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:24:05.796Z.