LAX00LA295 · Champion 7GCAA
Champion 7GCAA · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL) to Prineville Airport (S39)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA295
- 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
Champion 7GCAA
- 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
- N9648S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Red Bluff Municipal Airport (RBL), Red Bluff, CATo Prineville Airport (S39), Prineville, OR
- 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 · cruise
- 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 engine power
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the cross-country flight, the engine lost power and the airplane force landed in an open field. On landing roll, the left main wheel struck a depression collapsing the left main landing gear. Prior to departure, during her preflight inspection, the pilot had determined that the fuel tanks were full. After about 2 hours of flight, the pilot and her pilot-rated passenger elected to divert to an intermediate destination because of up and down drafts. Shortly after contacting approach control to receive flight following to the divert airfield, the engine sputtered and quit. Several hours after the accident a sheriff's deputy arrived at the scene. He reported no evidence of fuel spillage. A recovery crew got to the airplane 5 days later. The recovery personnel discovered that the fuel tank caps were in place and fit snugly, the fuel gascolator had been broken off, the fuel valve was in the 'OFF' position, there was no evidence of fuel spillage, and 2 gallons of fuel remained in the airplane, all in the right wing tank. The spark plugs had a normal appearance, cylinder compressions were good, and the intake and exhaust systems were open. The carburetor bowl was empty. The engine appeared capable of operating. Unusable fuel for the airplane is 1 gallon. During the postcrash examination, the right fuel tank vent check valve was inoperable.
Probable cause
A hidden depression in the ground that resulted in the collapse of the landing gear during the forced landing roll.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA295
- Event ID
- 20001212X21771
- Case number
- LAX00LA295
- 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: f7a0c465450b0258f495b0a2fb2a2def5ecbbea49f1398e3af787ae700b1b69a; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:36:08.248Z.