CHI99FA167 · Champion 7ECA
Champion 7ECA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99FA167
- 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
- 1 · 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 7ECA
- 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
- N12028
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness heard the airplane take off from the pilot's private field, which was located approximately 1/2 mile south of the witness' home. The witness said he saw the airplane approach from the east and fly over his house. As the airplane flew over, the witness observed the airplane rocking its wings. The witness said that he waved back to the pilot. The witness lost sight of the airplane as it went over the trees. The witness said he then heard the airplane's engine 'waver as if he was rocking his wings, and then bang.' The witness said that the airplane was flying low that day, '500 feet [above the ground] was optimistic to me.' The pilot's wife was visiting her friend's farm on which the airplane crashed, when the airplane flew over. She saw her husband tip his wing once. She said that she lost sight of the airplane when it flew over her friend's barn. After she lost sight of the airplane, the pilot's wife said that there was a 'few seconds, 3, 5, or 10 seconds of silence, then I heard the crash.' The pilot's wife said that there were no unusual engine sounds which preceded the silence. Examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies. FAA toxicology testing revealed the presence of Tetrahydrocannabinol Carboxylic Acid, an inactive metabolite of marijuana, in the pilot's blood and urine.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control. A factor contributing to this accident was the airplane's low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99FA167
- Event ID
- 20001212X18710
- Case number
- CHI99FA167
- 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: 4a8c002a83f912c9d41c57087c76543ea7605e0a02487dc77bd892bdb5b8fc4c; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:04:56.643Z.