ATL00LA064 · Aeronca 7BCM
Seminole Aviation Assoc Aeronca 7BCM · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From X16 · VANDERBERG, FL to Airport Manatee Airport (48X)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL00LA064
- 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 7BCM
- 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
- N83972
- Operator
- Seminole Aviation Assoc
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From X16 · VANDERBERG, FLTo Airport Manatee Airport (48X)
- 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
- 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 was practicing a power-off landing on runway 7. While on the downwind leg of the traffic pattern, he retarded the throttle to idle. Shortly after turning onto final approach, he stated that he attempted to apply power but there was 'no response.' However, witnesses observed the pilot turn the airplane onto the base leg in a steep right bank at the midpoint of the runway. The steep bank continued while the airplane turned onto final approach, and the airplane descended rapidly. At 40 to 60 ft. agl, the wings were leveled while the airplane had diminutive forward airspeed. Both witnesses heard what sounded like power being applied to the engine moments before impact. The airplane then impacted the ground near the midfield point of the runway in a wings level attitude, damaging the propeller and right wing. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no mechanical discrepancies, and weather conditions at the time of the accident were not favorable for the formation of carburetor ice.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed during final approach to landing, resulting in an inadvertent stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL00LA064
- Event ID
- 20001212X21158
- Case number
- ATL00LA064
- 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: 5ae5cd0b03549c1b4ef8a406c88b77716925d98dcf6041344ddf573b7538964c; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:38:01.553Z.