NYC96FA152 · Champion 7GCBC
Champion 7GCBC · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Muñoz Landing Airstrip (BLM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96FA152
- 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 7GCBC
- Aircraft type
- Champion 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
- N7557F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Muñoz Landing Airstrip (BLM)To 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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/mush
- 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 handling, improper
- Pilot in command › Stall/mush, inadvertent
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of a Champion 7GCBC (Citabria) departed for a banner pickup. He was observed to miss on his first attempted pickup, and he maneuvered the airplane back for another pickup maneuver. At about the time of the pickup, the pilot of another airplane had just turned from crosswind to downwind. The pilot of the other airplane said that he looked and saw the Citabria impact the ground in a nose down and right wing low attitude. The airplane was found with the tow rope still attached, but the banner had never moved. The fuselage was crushed and the wings were bend down so that both wing tips touched the ground. Fuel was found in the fuel tanks and in a line leading to the engine. There was no evidence of a preimpact mechanical failure or malfunction of the airplane. The pilot had recently qualified as a banner tow pilot. Since becoming qualified, he had completed 12 banner pickups. His total flight time was 445 hours.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper handling of the airplane during a banner pickup maneuver, which resulted in a stall/mush and collision with the ground. A factor relating to the accident was: the pilot's lack of experience in the type of operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96FA152
- Event ID
- 20001208X06330
- Case number
- NYC96FA152
- 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: f9359e66894db60ee30b4dc3723d93a08cbd14a689ccc9f8d6f763eda71cc447; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:16:20.789Z.