GAA17CA028 · Newkirk Thomas RAY VANS RV 6 A
Newkirk Thomas RAY VANS RV 6 A · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Allendale County Airport (AQX) to Garland, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA028
- 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
Newkirk Thomas RAY VANS RV 6 A
- Aircraft type
- Newkirk Thomas Ray VANS RV 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
- N164N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Allendale County Airport (AQX), Allendale, SCTo Garland, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 reported that during landing at his private grass runway, the airplane "skipped" during the initial landing touchdown. Subsequently, as the airplane settled back to the runway, the nose gear collapsed, and the airplane nosed over. The pilot further reported that the grass was "soft."
The vertical stabilizer sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported that the nose gear failed during the landing.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Aviation Safety Inspector (ASI) who spoke with the pilot postaccident, the pilot reported to him that the airplane bounced during the landing touchdown and when the airplane settled back to the runway, the nose gear had been damaged and further sunk into the grass runway.
A photo provided by the FAA ASI showed an initial impact mark about 100 feet prior to the location where the airplane nosed over. It is likely that the nose gear was damaged during the initial touchdown.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare, which resulted in a bounced landing on the grass runway.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA028
- Event ID
- 20161019X95333
- Case number
- GAA17CA028
- 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: 6c4ffeaea2a48840d9971e38ee094ebb56a39815b2709310ceeb434c4fa9702e; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:44:52.181Z.