ANC01LA115 · Champion 7ECA
Freedom Avaition Champion 7ECA · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Merrill Field (MRI) to Merrill Field (MRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA115
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- N5189X
- Operator
- Freedom Avaition
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (MRI), Anchorage, AKTo Merrill Field (MRI), AK
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- On ground/water 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 › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The newly certificated private pilot, with one passenger, entered a small valley that he thought would lead into a larger valley. After entering the valley, the terrain began rising, and the pilot initiated a full power climb. The valley became too narrow to turn around, the terrain continued to rise, and the airspeed was decreasing. The pilot was able to make a forced landing uphill, on an area of rough, uneven terrain. After landing, the pilot and his passenger were eventually able to turn the airplane around, facing downhill, in preparation for a takeoff attempt. The pilot said that during the downhill takeoff run, the airplane's main wheels struck a series of large bumps. The pilot said, in part: "...when we hit the bumps, just before takeoff, I accidentally closed the throttle, just as we just fell over a fifty feet cliff." The airplane continued to fall, collided with the valley floor, and sustained substantial damage.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of an unsuitable takeoff area. A factor associated with the accident was rough/uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA115
- Event ID
- 20010830X01838
- Case number
- ANC01LA115
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-08-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 64f747cc71583a255b12569848e262adbea35727edb317c96d0615a7652f10f5; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:52:20.431Z.