CEN13LA518 · American Champion 7GCB
American Champion 7GCB · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Mc Kinley Field (T30) to Mc Kinley Field (T30)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA518
- 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
American Champion 7GCB
- 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
- N9967Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mc Kinley Field (T30), Pearsall, TXTo Mc Kinley Field (T30), Pearsall, 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
- En route
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in flight, the rudder cable separated. The pilot was able to return to the airport and align the airplane to land. During the landing flare, the airplane began to drift and the pilot was not able to correct the drift. The pilot initiated a go-around; however, the airplane then entered an aerodynamic stall and subsequently impacted the ground. Examination of the rudder cable separation area found localized melting, darkening, and oxidation consistent with electrical arcing. The elongation and oxidation of the overstressed wires was consistent with separation at high temperature. According to the pilot, the passenger had gotten his foot caught in the rudder cable. The pilot believed that the rudder cable came in contact with the battery at that time; the battery box did not have a cover, and the positive terminal of the battery was unguarded. The contact would have resulted in the electrical arcing and the subsequent cable separation.
Probable cause
The failure of the rudder cable due to electrical arcing damage from contact with an unguarded battery and the pilot's subsequent loss of control during the go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA518
- Event ID
- 20130903X03549
- Case number
- CEN13LA518
- 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: a6c51fe55b26e8f136b315d344d2bdb4eb53deee77b25987b392cd940109f0b1; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:42:02.494Z.