ERA14CA039 · Taylorcraft BC 65
Taylorcraft BC 65 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Harford County Airport (0W3) to Fallston Airport (W42)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA14CA039
- 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
Taylorcraft BC 65
- Aircraft type
- Taylorcraft BC-65
- 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
- N52CW
- Operator
- Walker J C · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harford County Airport (0W3), CHURCHVILLE, MDTo Fallston Airport (W42), Fallston, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 67 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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 instructed the runway repair technicians to move their equipment so that he could depart from the closed runway that was NOTAM'd as such by the airport operator. The pilot/owner then took off downwind. Later, the pilot returned in the accident airplane and the technicians were surprised when the airplane "committed" to landing downwind on the closed runway. The technicians quickly moved their equipment from the runway surface but the pilot was unable to stop the airplane before striking the left wing against a construction vehicle off the left side of the runway, which resulted in substantial damage. In interviews with Federal Aviation Administration inspectors, the pilot did not report any mechanical deficiencies with his airplane that would preclude normal operation. According to NTSB records, this was the pilot's fourth accident in the previous 3 years.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing resulting in collision with equipment off the side of the runway. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's intentional landing on a closed runway with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA14CA039
- Event ID
- 20131108X94406
- Case number
- ERA14CA039
- 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: 87cb5689f9cc6559295597359105e4628b9da4e4ff2214541eceb9b1445b8931; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:05:38.206Z.