CEN10FA448 · American Champion Aircraft Cor 7GCBC
Big Q Aviation American Champion Aircraft Cor 7GCBC · Accident while maneuvering
From Mid-Way Regional Airport (JWY) to Mid-Way Regional Airport (JWY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA448
- 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
- 2 · 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
American Champion Aircraft Cor 7GCBC
- Aircraft type
- American 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
- N5027G
- Operator
- Big Q Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid-Way Regional Airport (JWY), Midlothian, TXTo Mid-Way Regional Airport (JWY), Midlothian, TX
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Personnel issues › Physical
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were conducting local area flight training before departing on a night cross-country flight. The airplane was southbound on the south end of the airport when several witnesses observed the airplane flying erratically at low altitude. The witnesses observed that, after several maneuvers, the airplane was in a turn when it suddenly entered an almost vertical spiral into the ground. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operations. An autopsy of the instructor revealed severe atherosclerosis of the right coronary artery with superimposed fresh-recent thrombus, suggesting an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). The instructor’s most recent application for a second-class medical certificate noted “no” to all under “Medical History” including heart or vascular trouble. There was no indication that the instructor was aware of his heart disease. Such an acute event may have led to incapacitation of the instructor and distracted of the student pilot to the point of a loss of airplane control.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s incapacitation due to preexisting but unrecognized coronary disease, and the student pilot’s distraction and inability to recover the airplane from a stall/spin at low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10FA448
- Event ID
- 20100730X32315
- Case number
- CEN10FA448
- 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 2010-07-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 5d496adba3b90618ed019bfaa34c9a312d4fa22c2c466475a886d2f0a11eb698; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:58:14.620Z.