IAD96LA140 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA140
- 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
- 0 · 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 7AC
- Aircraft type
- 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
- N81543
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK)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
- Initial climb
- 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 pilot stated that he had started his departure roll on runway 12 with a normal power setting. He said he climbed at 55 mph in a steep but normal attitude at about 30 degrees nose up. He said that he leveled off at about 100 feet above ground with wings level, when (what seemed like) a 'giant hand' (he guessed turbulence; there did not seem to be a flight control problem) started to 'throw the airplane around.' The airplane rolled left and right to 45 degrees or so, without warning. He said the airplane then descended in a flat attitude as if it was pushed, and it hit the ground slightly left wing down at full throttle. A witness, who was watching the takeoff, stated that the airplane took off in a steep nose high attitude, and at about ten feet above the ground, it stalled and fell back onto the runway, striking the left wing and separating the left main landing gear. He said the aircraft then slid off the runway to the left.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed during the initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in a stall and collision with the terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA140
- Event ID
- 20001208X06537
- Case number
- IAD96LA140
- 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: 04e076371e3a391e339985cf134dc4133dfdb711fcf2402f739c5447d76eedc8; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:36:23.725Z.