CEN09LA396 · Champion 7GCAA
Champion 7GCAA · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) while maneuvering
From Eagles Nest Airport (58II) to Shelbyville, IN
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA396
- 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 7GCAA
- 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
- N9085L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Eagles Nest Airport (58II), Boggstown, INTo Shelbyville, IN
- 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
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and a student pilot were practicing a simulated engine out maneuver. At 150 feet above ground level, the pilot increased the engine power but the engine did not respond. The pilot then attempted a forced landing to a field. During the landing flare, "the engine tried to come back..." After touchdown, the airplane ground-looped and sustained substantial damage. Examination of the engine revealed the mixture cable had fractured and separated. The airframe records showed the airplane's last annual inspection had not been completed in the preceding 12 months. Prior to the flight, the pilot had not reviewed the airplane logbooks to determine if the airplane was airworthy.
Probable cause
The partial loss of engine power due to the failure of the mixture control cable. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate maintenance on the airplane and the pilot's decision to operate the airplane in a condition that was not airworthy.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA396
- Event ID
- 20090630X85256
- Case number
- CEN09LA396
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-06-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b0b332085f60f298d712ea4e2d08114c81c93c1ca2a14bb0063399b92316c0cb; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:39:07.224Z.