NYC94LA088 · Aeronca 11AC
Aeronca 11AC · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC94LA088
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Aeronca 11AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 11
- 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
- N3167E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Berwick, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
SHORTLY AFTER TAKEOFF, THE AIRPLANE DESCENDED STEEPLY TO THE GROUND. THE AIRPLANE CRASHED AT THE MIDPOINT OF THE RUNWAY. THE EXAMINATION OF THE AIRPLANE REVEALED THE ELEVATOR FLIGHT CONTROLS WERE MISRIGGED AND THE ELEVATOR OPERATED IN REVERSE TO NORMAL CONTROL INPUTS. THE INSPECTION OF THE ELEVATOR TURNBUCKLE REVEALED THE SAFETY WIRE WAS TIED IN AN UNSATISFACTORY MANNER. ALSO, AN ELEVATOR CONTROL BOLT WAS INSTALLED WITH INADEQUATE CLEARANCE FROM THE AIRFRAME. THIS WAS THE FIRST FLIGHT AFTER AN ANNUAL INSPECTION. THE INSPECTION WAS DONE BY A LICENSED MECHANIC. ON THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT, THE PILOT WORKED ON THE AIRPLANE FOR SEVERAL HOURS. SAFETY WIRE WAS FOUND INSIDE THE AIRPLANE; SCREWS AND FASTENERS WERE FOUND IN THE PILOT'S PERSONAL EFFECTS.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight which fail to detect proper operation of the elevator which resulted in the loss of control inflight. A factor is inadequate maintenance which consisted of misrigging of the elevator flight controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC94LA088
- Event ID
- 20001206X01376
- Case number
- NYC94LA088
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: 580387a1ec2f51f59afad9b9cfb4233bb6da849ec6001a56efd06c89d97c27bd; retrieved 2026-09-21T00:09:22.220Z.