ANC04LA041 · Champion 7GC
Champion 7GC · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Wasilla Airport (PAWS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04LA041
- 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 7GC
- 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
- N8529E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wasilla Airport (PAWS), Wasilla, AKTo 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
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/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(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner/student pilot was receiving a 90-day flight currency check from a flight instructor. The student pilot reported that an annual inspection of the airplane had just been completed. He said he performed an engine run-up, taxied to the active runway, and maneuvered the airplane into takeoff position. Shortly after he initiated the takeoff roll, the airplane began to pull to the left. He indicated he applied right rudder, but could not prevent the airplane from continuing to the left. At an airspeed of about 35 to 40 mph, he applied right aileron, and lifted the left main wheel off the ground. The airplane began to track to the right, but when he lowered the left wheel to the ground, the airplane veered sharply to the left and departed the left side of the runway. The airplane collided with a ditch and received damage to the propeller, the left main landing gear strut, and structural damage to the left wing. Following the accident, the student pilot/owner said that a mechanic briefly examined the left wheel and left brake. The mechanic did not discover a mechanical malfunction at that time. A METAR at the time of the accident was reporting calm wind conditions.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the student pilot which resulted in a loss of directional control during the takeoff roll, and subsequent collision with a ditch. A factor contributing to the accident was the student pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04LA041
- Event ID
- 20040426X00511
- Case number
- ANC04LA041
- 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: 39285f579122caa263552ad2dc27c16ee0f404dde68f99c9842b2d51ef6edf15; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:42:44.143Z.