ANC15CA055 · Champion 7GCBC
Champion 7GCBC · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From an unrecorded airport to Skweetna, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC15CA055
- 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
Champion 7GCBC
- Aircraft type
- 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
- N3085G
- Operator
- Konstantine e Bunde · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Skweetna, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1968)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was landing a tailwheel-equipped airplane on a remote unimproved airstrip. Before the attempted landing, he made a low pass and determined that the dirt airstrip was clear of debris, and had what appeared to be grass on either side of the landing surface. During the final approach the airplane drifted about 10 to 15 feet to the left of the pilots intended touchdown point, and was aligned with the side of the airstrip. Having determined that the vegetation along the sides of the runway was grass the pilot elected not to execute a go-around and proceeded with the landing. The pilot realized, as the airplane touched down and immediately nosed over that the vegetation alongside the airstrip was not grass but alder brush. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings, vertical stabilizer and left lift strut. The pilot stated that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
In the recommendation section of the NTSB Accident/Incident Reporting Form 6120.1, the pilot stated that the accident may have been prevented if he would have aborted the landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to land on an unsuitable landing surface which resulted in a nose over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC15CA055
- Event ID
- 20150724X22847
- Case number
- ANC15CA055
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-07-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 45351aca46655815690570f91846f2be346cdc72a754e8f83e03a2606f181c27; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:34:22.601Z.