CEN15FA310 · Aeronca 7BCM (L-16A)
Aeronca 7BCM (L-16A) · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Afton Municipal Airport (KAFO) to Afton Municipal Airport (KAFO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15FA310
- 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
Aeronca 7BCM (L-16A)
- 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
- N8362H
- Operator
- Vaughn Hood
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Afton Municipal Airport (KAFO), Afton, WYTo Afton Municipal Airport (KAFO), Afton, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 68 years (built 1947)
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Destroyed
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
Witnesses reported seeing the airplane flying at a low altitude and the rear occupant dropping candy to people on the ground. The airplane then proceeded east and crossed a highway before beginning a turn to return for another pass. One witness reported that the airplane then made a sudden turn and the nose of the airplane dropped; another witness reported that the airplane suddenly dipped. The airplane impacted the front yard of a private residence. A postcrash examination of the airplane showed flight control continuity. No anomalies were found with the airplane's engine or other systems. It is likely the pilot exceeded the airplane's critical angle-of-attack following the turn, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall at low of an altitude to recover.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain airspeed while turning at low altitude, which resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle-of-attack and entering an aerodynamic stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15FA310
- Event ID
- 20150721X22557
- Case number
- CEN15FA310
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-07-22.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3df075c321d72426f0fbc257eb5e474a22d22d7080fad3b818cb04453e0ca92e; retrieved 2026-09-14T19:46:15.544Z.