ERA18TA179 · Stearman B75 N1
Stearman B75 N1 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Davidson County Executive Airport (EXX) to Davidson County Executive Airport (EXX)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18TA179
- 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
Stearman B75 N1
- Aircraft type
- Stearman B75
- 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
- N52584
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Davidson County Executive Airport (EXX), Lexington, NCTo Davidson County Executive Airport (EXX), Lexington, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 77 years (built 1941)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the second wheel landing of the flight and shortly after the tailwheel touched down on the runway, the airplane drifted right. The commercial pilot attempted to stop the drift by applying the wheel brakes. Subsequently, the airplane nosed over. The right wing, rudder, and vertical stabilizer sustained substantial damage. During a postaccident interview, the pilot stated that he "got on [the] brakes a little harder than I should have."
Examination of the landing gear assembly and rudder control linkages did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Therefore, it is likely the pilot's overapplication of the brakes resulted in the nose-over.
Probable cause
The pilot’s overapplication of the wheel brakes during landing, which resulted in a nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18TA179
- Event ID
- 20180625X54938
- Case number
- ERA18TA179
- 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: 8df92bd8e5e626155e73e6505ff9ff52ad0dbb22a42c32e03367cf1bc6aad192; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:40:07.343Z.