CHI04LA072 · American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC
American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Castlewood, SD (private airstrip) to Sunburg, MN
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA072
- 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) 8GCBC
- Aircraft type
- American Champion (acac) 8
- 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
- N186AC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Castlewood, SD (private airstrip)To Sunburg, MN
- 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 · landing roll
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- 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 airplane sustained substantial damage when it impacted a ditch and subsequently nosed over while landing on a gravel road. The pilot stated the purpose of the flight was to take aerial photographs of several Minnesota farms. The pilot reported that while in cruise flight he had the "sudden urge to use the bathroom" and he selected a nearby gravel road to land on. The pilot stated that during landing rollout he noticed a sign on the left side of the road. While he attempted to maneuver the airplane to avoid striking the sign, the right wheel "got sucked into the ditch which was full of snow." The airplane subsequently impacted the ditch and nosed over. The airplane was configured with extended range fuel system that increased the airplane's maximum endurance to approximately 7 hours. The accident flight was reported to be approximately 5 1/2 hours in duration.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight decision to land off-airport. A factor to the accident was the snow covered ditch.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA072
- Event ID
- 20040225X00235
- Case number
- CHI04LA072
- 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: cbb0f14dd5d2f80cbc57a074aafdcb9640e9642b01253a26698e0d0bc63c57c1; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:58:10.541Z.