Rick Nelson's plane crash
Douglas DC-3 · In-flight fire
From Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (K8A1) to Dallas Love Field (DAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA86AA012
- 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
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 9
- Survivors
- 2
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 2 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- 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
Douglas DC-3
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-3
- 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
- N711Y
- Operator
- Rick Nelson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Guntersville Municipal Joe Starnes Field (K8A1)To Dallas Love Field (DAL), Dallas, TX
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Fire
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission; Utility pole
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Fuselage, cabin › Fire
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
American pop singer Ricky Nelson died during the crash-landing of his band's aircraft on December 31, 1985. The plane, a Douglas DC-3, was brought down mid-flight outside De Kalb, Texas, by a fire that rapidly spread from a suspected faulty in-cabin heater. Nelson and six others—including several band members and his girlfriend—were killed in the accident. Both pilots survived.
Background
Nelson launched his musical career as a teenager on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, the television show hosted by his parents. He scored a string of pop, rock and country hit songs in the 1960s, but his career stalled in the 1970s. In 1985, Nelson was on a comeback tour.
Nelson dreaded flying but refused to travel by bus. In May 1985, he decided he needed a private plane and paid $118,000 for a 14-seat 1944 Douglas DC-3 (N711Y) that had once belonged to the DuPont family and later to Jerry Lee Lewis. After Nelson took ownership of the plane, it was plagued by mechanical problems. In one incident, Nelson's band was forced to push the plane off the runway after an engine failed. On a separate occasion, in September 1985, a malfunctioning ignition magneto prevented the plane from flying, meaning that Nelson could not participate in the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois.
Accident
On December 26, 1985, Nelson and the band left for a three-stop tour of the southern U.S. Following shows in Orlando, Florida, and Guntersville, Alabama, Nelson and other band members took off from Guntersville for a New Year's Eve celebration in Dallas. At approximately 5:14 p.m. CST on December 31, the plane crash-landed outside of De Kalb, Texas, northeast of Dallas, in a cow pasture less than 2 mi from a landing strip, hitting trees on its way down. Seven of the nine occupants were killed.
Investigation and cause
Investigation of incident
Reports vary as to whether the plane was on fire before it crashed, though some witnesses attested that it was indeed in flames while still airborne. However, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman Jim Burnett said that although the plane was filled with smoke, it landed and came to a stop before it was swallowed by flames. The NTSB conducted a year-long investigation and finally concluded that, while a definite cause was still unknown, the crash was probably the result of a fire that was caused by the plane's gasoline-powered cabin heater "acting up".
Text from the Wikipedia article “Death of Ricky Nelson” (revision 1373808804, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
AT 1708:48, WHILE CRUISING AT 6000', A PILOT OF N711Y ADVISED ATC, 'I THINK I'D LIKE TO TURN AROUND, HEAD FOR TEXARKANA HERE, I'VE GOT A LITTLE PROBLEM.' HE WAS PROVIDED A VECTOR & ADVISED OF CLOSEST AIRPORTS. SHORTLY AFTER, HE STATED HE WOULD BE UNABLE TO REACH THE AIRPORTS. AT 1711:49, HE SAID THERE WAS SMOKE IN THE COCKPIT. WHILE LANDING IN A FIELD AT 1714, THE AIRCRAFT HIT WIRES & A POLE THEN CONTINUED INTO TREES WHERE IT WAS EXTENSIVELY DAMAGED BY IMPACT & FIRE. THE CREW EGRESSED THRU THE COCKPIT WINDOWS. THE PASSENGERS DID NOT ESCAPE. DURING FLIGHT, THE CREW WAS UNABLE TO START THE CABIN HEATER; DESPITE REPEATED ATTEMPTS BY THE CAPTAIN. SMOKE THEN ENTERED THE CABIN. FRESH AIR VENTS & COCKPIT WINDOWS WERE OPENED, BUT SMOKE BECAME DENSE. THE CREW HAD DIFFICULTY SEEING. THE OXYGEN SYSTEM & HAND HELD FIRE EXTINGUISHERS WERE NOT USED. FASTENERS FOR THE HEATER DOOR WERE FOUND UNFASTENED. EXAMINATION INDICATED THE FIRE ORIGINATED IN THE AFTCABIN AREA, RIGHT HAND SIDE, AT OR NEAR THE FLOOR LINE. THE IGNITION AND FUEL SOURCES WERE NOT DETERMINED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: Death of Ricky Nelson
- Article
- Death of Ricky Nelson
- Revision
- 1373808804 · 2026-09-08 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q85756050
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA86AA012
- Event ID
- 20001214X38383
- Case number
- DCA86AA012
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Death of Ricky Nelson" (page 61595882, revision 1373808804); merged with NTSB case DCA86AA012 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record DCA86AA012: events.ev_date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record DCA86AA012
- Map position
- NTSB record DCA86AA012: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record DCA86AA012: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record DCA86AA012: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities (the NTSB record states no total)
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record DCA86AA012: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Death of Ricky Nelson" and NTSB case DCA86AA012, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local date may be a day earlier.