NYC03LA118 · American Champion (ACAC) 7GCAA
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association American Champion (ACAC) 7GCAA · Accident: hard landing
From Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK) to Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA118
- 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
American Champion (ACAC) 7GCAA
- Aircraft type
- American Champion (acac) 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
- N77GA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK), Frederick, MDTo Frederick Municipal Airport (FDK)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was executing his first landing in the airplane in an effort to obtain a tailwheel signoff. While approaching the runway, the airplane encountered a crosswind from the left. The certified flight instructor (CFI) instructed the private pilot to correct for the crosswind by adding right rudder inputs, which he did throughout landing to touchdown. After the airplane touched down, the private pilot began to over-control the airplane with the rudder. The CFI assumed the controls and added full power. The airplane climbed back into the air and the CFI tried to realign it with the runway centerline. The airplane descended back to the ground and touched down hard on the left main landing gear, shearing the landing gear assembly from the fuselage. The airplane then departed the left side of the runway, where the left wing dug into the ground. The airplane came to rest upright. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any abnormalities with the airplane flight controls, nor did the pilots report any. The winds reported at the airport, about the time of the accident, were calm.
Probable cause
The certified flight instructor's improper flare and his delayed remedial action. The pilot's failure to maintain directional control is a contributing factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA118
- Event ID
- 20030610X00845
- Case number
- NYC03LA118
- 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, coordinates. 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: 373ce6996bdb691feb8fa393f384e9e2bcaf99abd68c72611b13c63b605e07e2; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:12:41.838Z.