CHI96FA301 · Bellanca 7GCAA
Bellanca 7GCAA · Accident: loss of control in flight
From Hinckley Airport (0C2) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA301
- 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
- 2 · 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
Bellanca 7GCAA
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 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
- N5026Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hinckley Airport (0C2)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
- Unknown
- 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(cfi) › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Wing, bracing strut › Overload
- Wing, spar › Overload
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The engine tach indicated that the instructor pilot and student pilot had operated the airplane for about 5 minutes before it crashed about 1/2 mile south of the departure end of the runway. A witness reported he saw the airplane already established in a left spiral at 500 to 700 feet AGL, in about a 70-degree nose-down attitude. He reported the wings were intact as it spiraled very fast before the right wing separated straight back from the aircraft. The examination of the right wing strut attach fitting indicated it failed as a result of overstressing loads. The examination of the fore and aft wood spars indicated they had failed as a result of overload forces. The examination of the inboard rear strut attach fitting indicated it had failed in tension overload. The aircraft was 94 pounds over the maximum gross weight.
Probable cause
the instructor pilot exceeded the design stress limits of the aircraft which resulted in the overload failure of the wing. A factor was that the weight and balance of the aircraft was exceeded by the instructor pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA301
- Event ID
- 20001208X06427
- Case number
- CHI96FA301
- 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: 39fa2c44477c5ecd1c1bcf75ae018ebcdcd897b89c6a0444f8e84d66c966f29f; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:13:21.998Z.