CEN14CA157 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT) to Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA157
- 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
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
- N85372
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dalhart Municipal Airport (DHT), Dalhart, TXTo Clovis Municipal Airport (CVN), Clovis, NM
- Aircraft age
- About 68 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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 on ground
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported he planned on making a wheel landing at a higher than normal airspeed due to the anticipated strong surface wind. The pilot reported that during the landing roll, after the tailwheel settled to the ground, he noticed that the wind velocity was less than he anticipated and that his ground speed was "pretty fast." According to the pilot, due to the increased groundspeed, the wings were still producing some lift and although the gear remained on the runway, the full weight of the airplane was not on the landing gear. The pilot stated the airplane swerved to the right and he was able to regain directional control. The airplane then swerved to the left and the pilot was not able to regain directional control which resulted in a ground loop. The tailwheel traveled into the grass alongside the runway, and the right wing and right stabilizer contacted the ground. The pilot was able to taxi the airplane back onto the runway, however; he stated it would not taxi straight. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions of the airplane prior to the accident. A postaccident examination revealed the airplane sustained substantial damage to the aft fuselage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing roll which resulted in the airplane ground looping.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA157
- Event ID
- 20140311X80703
- Case number
- CEN14CA157
- 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, coordinates. 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: e23616634eedb995ca57ba48a6573dfa9a2a5af95ce6f9e8339ef94f54128575; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:23:38.809Z.