CEN10CA565 · North American AT-6
North American AT-6 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Flying Cloud Airport (FCM) to Antique Airfield (IA27)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA565
- 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
North American AT-6
- Aircraft type
- North American AT-6
- 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
- N77TX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying Cloud Airport (FCM), Eden Prairie, MNTo Antique Airfield (IA27), Blakesburg, IA
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel–equipped airplane performed a short-field landing on the grass runway. During the landing rollout, he applied the brakes and the aircraft slowed normally. Due to his position in the cockpit, the pilot could not see the end of the runway until the airplane approached it. He intentionally ground-looped the airplane in an attempt to avoid traveling off the end of the runway. The airplane turned 90 degrees and impacted trees. According to a Federal Aviation Administration inspector, witnesses reported the airplane's approach speed was excessive for the short runway. Examination of the airplane revealed substantial damage to the forward left wing spar. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's excessive airspeed during the landing, which resulted in his decision to perform an intentional ground loop to avoid a runway overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA565
- Event ID
- 20100928X90559
- Case number
- CEN10CA565
- 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: c239719b9e393335896da31ee12605433ab6f2cf97fc8ad6f83365dca55c12c0; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:24:54.243Z.