SEA97FA049 · Champion 7-GCBC
Cottage Grove Aviation Champion 7-GCBC · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Cottage Grove State Airport (61S) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97FA049
- 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 7-GCBC
- 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
- N9677S
- Operator
- Cottage Grove Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cottage Grove State Airport (61S), Cottage Grove, ORTo 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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/spin
- 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 › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
- Wing › Failure
- Wing, skin › Separation
- Wing, wingtip › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 7-GCBC Champion was observed engaged in repeated spin maneuvers. A witness reported observing that 'the plane was heading straight down spinning clockwise again' and 'was close to the elevation where it pulled out the first time. (That's) when I saw a piece of the plane come off.' This was the pilot's fifth flight since checking out in the aircraft (3.4 hours total flight time). According to witnesses, spins were conducted on all five flights. Postcrash examination revealed that the outboard right wing tip cap and some attached wing fabric had separated from the aircraft during flight. The examination also revealed that the forward and aft right wing spar structure were at the ground impact site of the fuselage. The right wing forward spar displayed upwards bending deformation and splintering just outboard of the forward wing strut attach point. NTSB records indicated the aircraft had been involved in an accident on 6/13/77 in Alaska; however, no aircraft records could be located to ascertain the extent of the damage, if any, to the right wing. An examination of the right wing spar structure revealed that it was within dimensional tolerances set by the manufacturer.
Probable cause
the pilot exceeded the design stress limits of the aircraft, while recovering from a spin, which resulted in failure and separation of the right wing tip and adjacent wing fabric (skin).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97FA049
- Event ID
- 20001208X07357
- Case number
- SEA97FA049
- 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: abe8e45f51297bdb54d2d1db626c0249b00d36f55c70f953d5d18a09ed7722fd; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:03:38.725Z.