CEN12CA355 · Ryan NAVION A
Ryan NAVION A · Accident: runway excursion during landing
From 4I7 · Greencastle, IN to Butler Field (IN46)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA355
- 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
Ryan NAVION A
- Aircraft type
- Ryan NAVION
- 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
- N4943K
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4I7 · Greencastle, INTo Butler Field (IN46), Rockville, IN
- 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
- 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
- Runway excursion
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before landing, the pilot overflew the airport and checked the runway environment. The pilot’s friend, who was flying another airplane, landed first on the 2,160-foot-long grass runway. The pilot then attempted to land on the same runway but aborted the first approach after he decided the airplane was too high and fast. During the second landing attempt, the airplane touched down on the main landing gear about the midpoint of the runway. The pilot stated that he held the nosewheel up and applied gentle braking, but the airplane did not slow at the rate he expected. The pilot considered aborting the landing; however, he believed that he would not be able to clear the trees at the end of the runway. The airplane ran off the runway, across a short overrun area, down a slope, and across a gravel road, where it impacted small trees. Postaccident examination revealed substantial damage to the fuselage and wing spars. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to attain the proper touchdown point during landing, which resulted in a runway overrun.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA355
- Event ID
- 20120611X61654
- Case number
- CEN12CA355
- 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: 0ad389d86e369a27cfa114f17566b982393c8cad3a76e9db6562e1e17d102c79; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:27:28.826Z.