ATL07CA053 · Champion 7ECA
Champion 7ECA · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Oliver Springs Inc Airport (TN08) to Oliver Springs Inc Airport (TN08)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07CA053
- 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
Champion 7ECA
- Aircraft type
- 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
- N9596S
- Operator
- Micheal J. Matvy · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oliver Springs Inc Airport (TN08), Oliver Springs, TNTo Oliver Springs Inc Airport (TN08), Oliver Springs, TN
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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 › Altitude/clearance, 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 pilot he was practicing full stop landings. On his fifth landing he flew a left hand pattern for the runway. He performed a slip on final approach and realized that the airplane was too low and also short of the runway. He added power, and believed he would be able to make the landing on the runway. During the landing flare the right main gear collided with a runway marker sign. As the airplane settled onto the runway, it veered off to the right side and collided with a ditch. The pilot did not report any flight control or mechanical anomalies with the airplane prior to the accident. Examination by an FAA inspector revealed that the right main landing gear was separated from the fuselage. Further examination revealed that the airplane's firewall and fuselage were buckled.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate clearance, resulting in an in-flight collision with an airport sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07CA053
- Event ID
- 20070524X00629
- Case number
- ATL07CA053
- 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: 672e8e66f5ee8d4647ad8b2650785d73eabbd650b1636e4b71da9e77c5275cb5; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:33:41.460Z.