ANC06LA105 · American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC
American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Merrill Field (MRI) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06LA105
- 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
American Champion (ACAC) 8GCBC
- Aircraft type
- American Champion (acac) 8
- 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
- N35RF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merrill Field (MRI), Merrill Field, 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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; Tree(s)
- 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) › 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
The commercial certificated flight instructor was giving primary flight instruction under Title 14, CFR Part 91 when the accident occurred. According to the student pilot, they were doing traffic pattern work at a gravel airstrip, when during initial climb from the runway, the instructor "pulled the engine" to simulate a loss of engine power emergency. The runway they were using required a departure over a saltwater inlet, and the only recourse was to execute a 180 degree turn toward the runway they had just departed. The student estimated they were 300-500 feet above the water when he initiated a standard rate turn. He said the instructor told him the turn was not steep enough, but because of the low altitude, the student did not feel comfortable increasing the angle of bank. The student said the instructor took control of the airplane, and dramatically increased the angle of bank. He said the airplane stalled, and dove toward the ground, with the instructor leveling the wings just as the airplane collided with trees adjacent to the runway. The student said the airplane's wings and fuselage received structural damage.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain sufficient airspeed to avoid a stall during a turn to reverse direction, which resulted in an inadvertent stall and a loss of control. Factors associated with the accident are the inadvertent stall, and the flight instructor's improper in-flight planning/decision to simulate a low altitude loss of engine power over water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06LA105
- Event ID
- 20060928X01420
- Case number
- ANC06LA105
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-08-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9c4f190b9dca4e759c9b3fbdacd646344118a2c60a4ff6b5669df32710f4d04c; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:54:55.458Z.