ANC15CA064 · Champion 7HC
Champion 7HC · Accident: fuel related en route
From Coldfoot Airport (CXF) to Galbraith Lake Airport (GBH)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC15CA064
- 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 7HC
- 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
- N8556E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coldfoot Airport (CXF), COLDFOOT, AKTo Galbraith Lake Airport (GBH), GALBRAITH LAKE, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1959)
- 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 · change of cruise level
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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 systems
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was climbing to cross a remote mountain pass when the airplane's engine lost partial power. The pilot turned the airplane to the left and the engine lost total power and started descending very quickly. The pilot attempted to make a forced landing to a road, but did not make it and landed the airplane in an area of rocks and a ditch. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage, and a postaccident fire then destroyed the airplane.
Plotting temperature and dew point on a carburetor icing probability chart placed the conditions noted at the time of the accident as being probable for serious carburetor icing in cruise or climb power. The pilot stated that he did not use carburetor heat either during the climb, or after the engine lost power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to carburetor icing and the pilot's failure to recognize conditions favorable for carburetor icing and apply use of carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC15CA064
- Event ID
- 20150817X02422
- Case number
- ANC15CA064
- 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 2015-08-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: aa6455ff665dcce8f6bf8f042829804340aa6f81c4ea52cab803b46204a0c961; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:40:41.667Z.