DEN06LA099 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Everitt Airport (1CO8) to Everitt Airport (1CO8)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06LA099
- 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
- N85086
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Everitt Airport (1CO8), Parker, COTo Everitt Airport (1CO8), Parker, CO
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Airspeed, 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
Prior to takeoff, the flight instructor and student discussed the direction of takeoff before the flight, and they elected to takeoff on runway 22, since the tailwind component was too strong for runway 4. They also discussed "a go/no go location on the strip where [they] would abort if not off the ground by that point." The instructor reported "the run-up was normal and everything seemed in order." The takeoff was normal and the airplane was airborne before the decision point. The airplane was "climbing out upslope, everything seemed normal as the student flew, until he said he might need some help." The instructor reported the airplane had stopped climbing and "the ridge was getting closer." Subsequently, they attempted a shallow bank at a direction 90 degrees from their original course. At that point, " the left wing dipped and we lost control." The instructor reported "we were slow and not very high, so there was not much momentum built up before we struck first the left wing tip, followed by the right wing and airplane." He also reported the engine had been operating normally throughout the flight, and there were no anomalies noted with the handling of the airplane. The calculated density altitude near the airport at the time of the accident was 8,675 feet.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's failure to maintain airspeed while maneuvering resulting in an inadvertent stall and subsequent impact with terrain. Contributing factors were the high density altitude, rising terrain, and improper in-flight planning.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06LA099
- Event ID
- 20060718X00962
- Case number
- DEN06LA099
- 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: 20915087fe99c25546d02f65eee685d039b1fafcf370a4c8589709a75b76678e; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:55:43.791Z.