DEN06FA107 · American Champion 7KCAB
American Champion 7KCAB · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From McElroy Airfield (20V) to 1V5 · Boulder, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN06FA107
- 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
- 2 · 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 7KCAB
- Aircraft type
- American 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
- N5232X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McElroy Airfield (20V), Kremmling, COTo 1V5 · Boulder, 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
- 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/spin
- 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 › Airspeed(vs), 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
According to family members, the pilot had flown to the vicinity of the continental divide and camped out in preparation for a flight over the divide the next day. On the accident flight, witnesses related that they saw the airplane fly over the divide, into mountainous terrain, circle around the divide, and fly towards a local lake. One witness said the airplane was so low he thought it was going to land on the lake. Another witness saw the airplane enter a bank at low altitude, at which time "the nose turned down and the airplane went straight down like it was hit with a fly swatter." An additional witness reported that the nose went down with the nose facing opposite the original direction of flight. Discussions with other pilots and her former aerobatic instructor, disclosed that the pilot liked to perform aerobatics, and fly at a low altitude over steep terrain. Postaccident inspection of the airplane revealed impact signatures consistent with a loss of control and a stall/spin. No evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomaly was discovered.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed to avoid a stall while maneuvering at a low altitude in mountainous terrain. Factors associated with the accident are the pilot's performance of a low altitude flight maneuver, an inadvertent stall/spin, and the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN06FA107
- Event ID
- 20060801X01066
- Case number
- DEN06FA107
- 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: 468ae11e4d2542d2ebb50665917a3c39a43c8ea8ff110337685874ed5a809924; retrieved 2026-09-20T17:06:40.186Z.