ERA09LA230 · Champion 7HC
Champion 7HC · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From C22 · Centre, AL to Centre-Piedmont-Cherokee County Regional Airport (PYP)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA230
- 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
Champion 7HC
- 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
- N8560E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From C22 · Centre, ALTo Centre-Piedmont-Cherokee County Regional Airport (PYP), Centre, 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
- Takeoff
- Defining eventThe 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported that during takeoff the airplane climbed to approximately 20 to 50 feet, rolled to the left into a steep bank angle, and then descended and collided with powerlines and a house. Examination of the airplane by an FAA inspector revealed that the right rudder pedal control tube was missing the rod attachment bolt, retainer nut, and cotter pin. According to the airplane manufacturer the push pull tube system discovered during the examination was not installed at the factory and no record of the install was located in the airframe logbooks. Examination of the engine, additional flight control system components, and the aircraft structure revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain aircraft control during climb due to an improperly installed rudder pedal control tube.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA230
- Event ID
- 20090404X75354
- Case number
- ERA09LA230
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 464d3f3df621385347605d2734358f4fa0a866418d2a08f77244418c71fb144f; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:02:08.477Z.