MIA04LA096 · Aeronca 11AC
Aeronca 11AC · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Williston, FL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA04LA096
- 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
Aeronca 11AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 11
- 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
- N85970
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Williston, FLTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Stall/mush
- 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 › Airspeed(vso), not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness who was feeding horses at the time, stated that he saw the airplane performing touch-and-go landings to an open field. He said that the airplane touched down and that he saw the airplane takeoff again, and he observed it turning sharply after takeoff, while still at a low altitude. He said he then saw the nose lower, and the airplane descend out of sight, and then he heard the sound of an impact. The witness further stated that throughout the flight the engine sounded as if it was operating normally. In addition to the first witness, another witness said he observed the airplane touching down and taking off, and further observed it in a turn before hearing it impact the ground. After hospitalization as a result of his injuries the pilot provided a report to the NTSB stating that he could not remember anything about the accident. Examination of FAA records revealed that the pilot's last medical examination had been on February 1, 2000. On August 20, 2004, an FAA inspector examined the accident airplane, and no anomalies were found with the airframe, flight controls, or the engine and accessories.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed (Vso) while maneuvering, which resulted in a stall/mush, an uncontrolled descent, and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA04LA096
- Event ID
- 20040622X00844
- Case number
- MIA04LA096
- 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: 0b374b6449aa08292d5d34179e4d7994f846264d92dd7aa4fcb6d1cca0c84648; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:16:23.899Z.