MIA96FA185 · Champion AERONCA 7GCB AERONCA 7G
Champion AERONCA 7GCB AERONCA 7G · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA96FA185
- 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
Champion AERONCA 7GCB AERONCA 7G
- Aircraft type
- Champion AERONCA 7
- 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
- N9908Y
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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
- Stall
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Stall, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The passenger stated the pilot descended the aircraft toward the water, then entered a steep climb. The passenger then noticed the aircraft was descending in a near vertical descent toward the water, where it crashed. Witnesses observed the aircraft descending toward the water, then pull up into a steep climb. After reaching about 200 feet, the right wing and nose dropped, and the aircraft descended nose first until impact with the water. Other witnesses had observed the aircraft in wing-over maneuvers at a low altitude over the water on the day before. Friends of the passenger, who flew with the pilot the day before, stated he had been performing wing-over maneuvers close to the water. At the time of the accident, the aircraft was estimated to be 97 pounds over the maximum allowable gross weight. Postcrash examination of the aircraft showed no evidence pre-crash failure or malfunction of the aircraft structure, floats, flight controls, or engine.
Probable cause
failure of the pilot to maintain adequate airspeed, while manuevering at low altitude, which resulted in an inadvertent stall and uncontrolled impact with the water. The pilot's ostentatious display and the lack of altitude to recover from a stall were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA96FA185
- Event ID
- 20001208X06305
- Case number
- MIA96FA185
- 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: dc32c11f4436677636ffe26cc4e7005696ab544ce94ca910b76581642ef1beca; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:16:43.517Z.