ATL04CA169 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Spring Paths Airport (42NC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04CA169
- 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 7AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 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
- N84399
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spring Paths Airport (42NC), Spring Hope, NCTo 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Flt control syst, aileron control cable/rod › Binding(mechanical)
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the first flight was uneventful, and that he did not note any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane. The pilot stated upon landing, he dropped off his friend, and another friend got in the airplane for another flight. The pilot stated, he "ground checked the aircraft thoroughly before departure" as well as checked the magnetos, carburetor heat, and flight controls during a run-up, and "everything was normal." The pilot stated that he took off with full power and upon reaching between 80-100 feet over the departure end of runway 17, the airplane flight controls began "feeling stiff," and the airplane began banking right. The pilot stated that excessive pressure on the flight controls was required to keep the wings level, and the airplane also began to lose altitude. The airplane collided with 40-foot trees 1/4 mile beyond and 50 feet to the right of the departure end of runway 17. Post-accident examination of the airplane revealed that both wings were crushed aft against the fuselage and were partially attached at the wing roots. The outboard four feet of the right wing was separated. The left wing strut was separated from the fuselage and wing and crushed. The left main landing gear was separated from the fuselage. Examination of the flight controls revealed full rudder travel was established by manually depressing both right and left rudder pedals and full elevator travel was established by manually moving the control stick forward and aft. When the control stick was manually moved left to right, a binding in the control travel was noted and a clicking sound was heard in the area behind the rear seat. During recovery of the airplane wreckage, it was observed that the right aileron control cable had come off the pulley and was wedged between the pulley and the bracket where the right aileron control cable leaves the fuselage leading into the right wing. The last annual inspection on the airplane was performed on October 1, 2003. Twelve hours had been accumulated on the airplane since the last annual inspection. The annual inspection checklist items, "cables" and "ailerons," were initialed by the authorized inspector (IA) as being performed.
Probable cause
The binding of the right aileron control cable, which resulted in a loss in aileron control, and subsequent collision with trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04CA169
- Event ID
- 20041005X01561
- Case number
- ATL04CA169
- 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: 93969ca1b723cabfc510edfb801f5e8f48528a414a13ae4f0513240997272f95; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:51:31.095Z.