CEN12IA498 · American Champion Aircraft 8KCAB
American Champion Aircraft 8KCAB · Incident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while maneuvering
From Wittman Regional Airport (OSH) to Wittman Regional Airport (OSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12IA498
- 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
- Incident
- 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
American Champion Aircraft 8KCAB
- Aircraft type
- American Champion 8
- 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
- N60GK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WITo Wittman Regional Airport (OSH), Oshkosh, WI
- 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 · aerobatics
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
- Organizational issues › Development
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing at an air show and entered the aerobatic box with a 45 degree descending roll. At an airspeed of 150 mph, the pilot pulled up into a loop and then initiated a “snap-on-top-of-a-loop” maneuver. The pilot’s seat then broke, and the pilot and seatback fell backward onto the rear seat and rear control column, temporarily jamming the flight controls. The pilot was then able to recover the airplane to a “right-side-up” position with wings level. He flew away from the crowd to assess the situation and subsequently landed without further incident.
An examination revealed that the airplane’s seat bottom frame was not equipped with a required reinforcement truss stiffener. The manufacturer reviewed its production work orders and discovered that a batch of 10 seats were produced that were not constructed with the truss stiffener and, therefore, did not conform with the airplane’s production type certificate. As a result of this investigation, the manufacturer added steps to the seat production and inspection procedures to ensure proper seat assembly. Additionally, the manufacturer added to the seat welding fixture a locator (a visual cue) for the truss stiffener parts. Further, Service Letter 437 was published indicating that owners should perform a one-time inspection to ensure that the seat bottom frame contains the required reinforcement truss stiffener.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot’s seat bottom frame due to the manufacturer’s improper production, installation, and inspection of that seat bottom, which resulted in a temporary loss of control during an air show performance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12IA498
- Event ID
- 20120731X50418
- Case number
- CEN12IA498
- 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, damage. 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: 898e3b6e6ec7eef3b01f9ea62072346c7cc0ba4caa825b07102c0c8954d119f7; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:08:33.509Z.