NYC98FA166 · Champion 7FC
Champion 7FC · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Sunset Strip (OH07) to Lee Field (2D1)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98FA166
- 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 7FC
- 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
- N8520E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sunset Strip (OH07), MARLBORO, OHTo Lee Field (2D1)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was practicing touch and go landings, with a private pilot rated passenger seated in the rear seat. On the fourth landing, the airplane was observed to extend its downwind leg and looked 'very low' on final approach. The airplane descended at the same rate it was observed to descend on the previous landing attempts, and no pitch changes were observed. The airplane impacted a stand of trees, nosed over, and impacted terrain. The airplane came to rest approximately 467 feet from the runway threshold. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact mechanical malfunctions of the airframe or engine. The airplane was using automotive gasoline per a supplemental type certificate. The spark plugs were covered with black carbon deposits. The pilot had about 63 total flight hours, of which about 10 hours were in make and model. His last logged flight was about 7 months prior to the accident. The carburetor icing probability chart published by the FAA, placed the temperature/dew-point reported at an airport about 18 miles west of the accident site, in the 'serious icing at glide power,' section.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance during the approach which resulted in an in-flight collision with trees. A factor in the accident was the pilot's lack of recent experience and lack of experience in the make and model of the accident airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98FA166
- Event ID
- 20001211X10934
- Case number
- NYC98FA166
- 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: 4065841098eeb51da7b554d77dddd3f3077921d6be8e950bdc86369bb4df5dbc; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:28:03.076Z.