CEN12FA601 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Brighton Airport (45G) to Brighton Airport (45G)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12FA601
- 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
Aeronca 7AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 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
- N82383
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brighton Airport (45G), Brighton, MITo Brighton Airport (45G), Brighton, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 66 years (built 1946)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the airplane make a normal engine run-up before takeoff followed by a normal takeoff from the runway. Shortly after takeoff, the engine did not sound like it was developing full power, and the airplane was struggling to climb. Subsequently, the airplane made a 180-degree turn and then descended toward terrain in a nose-down attitude. Postaccident examination of the airplane revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Although the weather conditions at the time of takeoff were conducive to the formation of carburetor ice at glide and cruise power, it could not be determined whether carburetor ice was a factor in the loss of engine power. It is likely that the pilot failed to maintain airspeed during the turn back to the airport, which resulted in a stall.
Postaccident examination of the airframe revealed that the pilot's shoulder harness failed during the accident. Material examination of the shoulder harness webbing and stitching showed that they failed due to an overload event. The occupants' injuries suggest that both occupants were using the four-point shoulder harnesses at the time of the accident and were exposed to strong deceleration forces. If the pilot's shoulder harness had not failed, he likely would not have suffered the brain injury he received, which caused permanent disability. However, it is possible that an intact shoulder harness could have led to more severe chest, abdominal, or cervical injuries. The investigation could not determine whether the pilot would have died or sustained a permanent disability from some other injury if the shoulder harness had remained intact.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain airspeed following a partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examination, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall and loss of airplane control. Contributing to the severity of the pilot’s head injuries was the failure of the shoulder harness assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12FA601
- Event ID
- 20120904X64842
- Case number
- CEN12FA601
- 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: de00d70936f320708ec443926a96cd5fedbb5ab68f47f9396719cb3d2ad600c1; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:43:32.056Z.