NYC88LA180 · Champion 7GCAA
Champion 7GCAA · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Lakewood Airport (N12) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC88LA180
- 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 Possible conflict
- 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
- N11088
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakewood Airport (N12), Lakewood, NJTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Flight control, rudder › Jammed
- Sign towing equipment › Entangled
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lakewood, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
DURING A BANNER PICK-UP THE AIRPLANE EXPERIENCED A LOSS OF DIRECTIONAL CONTROL. THE RUDDER WAS JAMMED FULL LEFT BY THE BANNER TOW ROPE, AND WHILE ATTEMPTING TO LAND, THE AIRPLANE RAN OFF THE RUNWAY AND HIT TWO PARKED AIRCRAFT.
Probable cause
LOSS OF DIRECTIONAL CONTROL DURING LANDING, DUE TO A BANNER TOWING ROPE BEING WRAPPED AROUND THE LEFT RUDDER HORN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC88LA180
- Event ID
- 20001213X26370
- Case number
- NYC88LA180
- 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: a0b32dbc75a28d356f58fc9dbcbbd124094e954eb4878c40446105c38555bab9; retrieved 2026-09-23T09:40:45.171Z.