ERA16LA172 · Champion 7BCM
Commemorative Air Force Champion 7BCM · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC) to Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA172
- 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 7BCM
- 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
- N7620B
- Operator
- Commemorative Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC), Peachtree City, GATo Peachtree City Falcon Field (FFC), Peachtree City, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 69 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was conducting a revenue sightseeing flight with one passenger onboard. During cruise flight, while the airplane was level at 3,000 ft mean sea level, the engine began to lose power. The pilot applied carburetor heat with no improvement; the engine speed remained at 2,000 rpm. He then turned the carburetor heat off and checked the magnetos and noted no significant change in performance. He then reapplied carburetor heat with no improvement; the pilot left the heat on for the remainder of the flight. The airplane would not maintain altitude, so he conducted a forced landing in a grass field. After touchdown, the airplane nosed down in high vegetation, and the main landing gear collapsed. The airplane sustained structural damage to the forward fuselage and engine firewall.
Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation, and there was sufficient fuel onboard at the time of the accident. Although the weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to serious carburetor icing at glide power, the pilot applied carburetor heat twice, which should have melted any existing ice, but power was not restored. Therefore, the investigation could not determine the reason for the partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power during cruise flight for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA172
- Event ID
- 20160501X83655
- Case number
- ERA16LA172
- 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: fb46933c5ed6b119ccd14e7b00fd654b0f70586f5e7188aaaaa29fec11598e8f; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:20:22.694Z.