ANC07LA064 · Champion 7GCB
Champion 7GCB · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From King Salmon, AK to King Salmon Airport (PAKN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07LA064
- 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 7GCB
- 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
- N9897Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From King Salmon, AKTo King Salmon Airport (PAKN), King Salmon, AK
- 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
- Takeoff · roll/run
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
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 pilot was taking off in a tundra tire-equipped airplane from a rough/uneven off-airport site under Title 14, CFR Part 91. He said his passenger reported hearing a thud or bang just prior to lifting off. The takeoff area was predominately gravel with some larger rocks, and the pilot reported that as the airplane lifted off, it immediately veered to the right. He said regardless of his control inputs, the airplane continued to the right, and impacted the ground. The pilot said the right main landing gear separated during takeoff, and the airplane did not have enough flying speed to overcome the drag. He said the airplane sustained damage to the right wing, right landing gear, fuselage, and propeller. In a written statement, the pilot wrote that more careful landing area selection might have prevented the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of unsuitable terrain for takeoff, which resulted in the right main landing gear collapsing during takeoff. Factors contributing to the accident were rough/uneven terrain, and the collapse of the main landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07LA064
- Event ID
- 20070717X00950
- Case number
- ANC07LA064
- 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 2007-07-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 726f90d5a87e35e10d830fbb40d875c213b13b31fb7abdd8f30c80525660ccd0; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:40:16.588Z.