MIA08FA003 · Bellanca 7GCBC
Ag-Flight Bellanca 7GCBC · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Decatur County Industrial Air Park (BGE) to Weedon Field (EUF)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08FA003
- 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
- 1 · 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
Bellanca 7GCBC
- Aircraft type
- Bellanca 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
- N62970
- Operator
- Ag-Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Decatur County Industrial Air Park (BGE), Bainbridge, GATo Weedon Field (EUF), Eufaula, AL
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, compliance with ad, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the day of the accident, the newly certificated private pilot went on a short cross-country flight to build additional time for a commercial pilot certificate. While in cruise flight, the airplane's right outboard wing, at the wing strut attachment point, separated at the front and rear wing spars as a result of preexisting compressive damage. The airplane subsequently descended out of control and impacted the ground in a near-vertical nose-down attitude. Review of the airplane’s maintenance logbook records showed that an annual inspection was completed about 10 days, and 4.2 flight hours prior to the accident. The inspection write-up found in the logbook stated in part that on the day of the annual inspection, the airframe and powerplant mechanic with an inspection authorization (IA) complied with airworthiness directive (AD) 2000-25-02 R1, by inspecting the wood wing spars in accordance with (I/A/W) American Champion Aircraft Corporation (ACAC) Service Letter 406, and stated that no cracks were detected. Further inspection of the right wing found several inspection holes, one of which was located at the wing strut attachment point on the underside of the wing, and several inspection holes on the upper surface of the wing. However, the location and number of inspection holes were inadequate to allow total compliance with AD 2000-25-02, or ACAC Service Letter 406 and ACAC Service Letter 417. Given the size of the area of preexisting damage, had the IA inspected the wing spars at the wing strut attach point, where there was an inspection hole, in an attempt to comply with AD 2000-25-02, ACAC Service Letter 406, and ACAC Service Letter 417, he would have seen the preexisting damage.
Probable cause
The failure of the right wing wooden spar due while the airplane was in cruise flight, due to the mechanic's inadequate annual inspection and his failure to comply with an airworthiness directive.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08FA003
- Event ID
- 20071017X01592
- Case number
- MIA08FA003
- 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. 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: ff87e0ce33e24303f0e2093377d69431e55ba6b42a4ad9d88f22da7ccedf4699; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:13:40.534Z.