ERA16CA057 · Boeing A75N1(PT17) UNDESIGNAT
Allen Chorman & Son Boeing A75N1(PT17) UNDESIGNAT and American Industrial and Marine Electroni Mooney M20J · Accident: ground collision during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16CA057
- 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
Aircraft 1 · Boeing A75N1(PT17) UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Boeing A75
- 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
- N53488
- Operator
- Allen Chorman & Son
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Milford, DETo Chorman Airport (D74), Farmington, DE
- Aircraft age
- About 73 years (built 1942)
- 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
- Ground collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Aircraft 2 · Mooney M20J
- Aircraft type
- Mooney M20
- 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
- N201HK
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chorman Airport (D74), Farmington, DETo Chorman Airport (D74), Farmington, DE
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Ground collision
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilots of the Mooney and the Boeing tail-wheel biplane, they arrived at the non-towered airport and entered the traffic patterns for opposing sides of the 3,588-foot-long by 37-foot-wide runway at approximately the same time. The Mooney entered the pattern on a left downwind for runway 34. The pilot stated he made radio calls over the Common Traffic Advisory Frequency at each leg of the traffic pattern. The pilot of the biplane entered the left 45-degree entry for downwind to runway 16 because winds appeared to favor that runway. The biplane was not equipped with a two-way radio. As the pilot of the Mooney touched down on runway 34, he saw the biplane on the opposite end. The Mooney pilot stopped his airplane on the runway about 300 feet from the biplane, and observed the biplane continue to taxi towards him. When it appeared that the biplane was not going to stop, he applied power and took take evasive action to the left. The pilot of the biplane had limited forward visibility due to its nose high, tail-wheel configuration, and he was unable to "s-turn" the biplane as he taxied due to the runway's narrow width. He did not did not see the Mooney until it passed under his right wing and they collided. Neither pilot reported any mechanical problems with their respective airplanes. Federal Aviation Administration inspectors examined both airplane's after the accident noted that each had been substantially damaged during the collision. The Mooney tail assembly was partially detached from the fuselage and bent 25 degrees to the left, while the bottom right wing spar of the biplane was damaged.
Probable cause
Both pilots' failure to maintain visual separation during landing at non-towered airport. Contributing to the accident was the Mooney pilot's lack of prompt evasive action once the biplane had been spotted on the same runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16CA057
- Event ID
- 20151203X75717
- Case number
- ERA16CA057
- 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: 1b2c7926f5dcdfac0662d90229428127d8a5fdf0fff2c9c1fe66cd25301b230c; retrieved 2026-09-13T18:24:40.286Z.