MIA97FA047 · Champion 7GCBC
Champion 7GCBC · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From North Perry Airport (HWO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA047
- 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
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
- N7596F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Perry Airport (HWO), Hollywood, FLTo 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- 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 › Altitude, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot initiated a loop from an altitude of about 50 feet above ground level then failed to recover before impact with water. The left wing aft hinge attach hardware was not in place. No determination could be made as to when the hardware separated. The airplane was last inspected in accordance with an annual inspection 2.01 hours earlier and the airplane had been flown on three separate flights excluding the accident flight since the annual inspection was performed. None of the flights involved acrobatic maneuvers. The hardware is required to be inspected for condition and security during an annual inspection. Tension overload failure of the left aileron up cable was noted near the wing root area. Weight and balance calculations indicated that the airplane was over gross weight at the time of takeoff and at the accident. FAR'S indicate that aerobatic maneuvers are to be performed so completion occurs at an altitude at least 1,500 feet above ground level. The engine was started and found to operate normally.
Probable cause
Intentional aerobatics at too low an altitude that did not allow for recovery from an intentional maneuver. Contributing to the accident was the operation of the airplane at an overgross weight condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA047
- Event ID
- 20001208X07205
- Case number
- MIA97FA047
- 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: 658db5593570c006c39c1e7eaa43dace20e63fcd23ed5bb4c86dcda0f521dfe0; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:04:38.523Z.