ERA12CA393 · North American AT-6C
North American AT-6C · Accident: landing area overshoot
From Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (SBY) to Delmar, DE (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA393
- 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-6C
- 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
- N7055K
- Operator
- Wayne E. Bailey · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salisbury Ocean City Wicomico Regional Airport (SBY), Salisbury, MDTo Delmar, DE (no airport)
- 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
- Landing area overshoot
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, who was delivering the recently-sold vintage military trainer, he first landed the airplane at a paved airport near the new owner's farm. The new owner then asked the pilot to fly the airplane to a dirt airstrip on the farm. The pilot went to the airstrip with the new owner, determined that it was acceptable for landing, and later returned with the airplane. During the landing flare, the airplane floated due to, what the pilot later surmised, convective currents from the hot soil. The airplane subsequently touched down long and overran the end of the 1,380-foot airstrip. During the overrun, the airplane encountered a soft spot in the adjoining onion field and nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the rudder and vertical fin. The landing direction was to the north, while the nearest recorded airport weather indicated that the wind was from the east at 5 knots. There were no preexisting mechanical anomalies noted with the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to go around after not attaining the proper touchdown point, which resulted in a runway excursion and noseover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA393
- Event ID
- 20120613X31642
- Case number
- ERA12CA393
- 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: cef4e8fb3d42bb859c961ef47e009f970bdcb3f8640eaabec865803774d38e11; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:29:42.069Z.