ERA16LA174 · American Champion Aircraft 7AC
American Champion Aircraft 7AC · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN) to Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA174
- 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
American Champion Aircraft 7AC
- Aircraft type
- American 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
- N85510
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN), Keene, NHTo Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN), Keene, NH
- Aircraft age
- About 70 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The sport pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane had completed one touch-and-go landing uneventfully on a 6,201-ft-long, 100-ft-wide asphalt runway. During the second landing, the tailwheel began to "shimmy." Rather than apply forward control stick pressure to reduce weight on the tailwheel and alleviate the shimmy, the pilot held the control stick fully aft as the airplane departed the left side of the runway and impacted an approach path indicator light. Examination of the tailwheel locking mechanism revealed that it was worn and had unlocked during touchdown. The pilot should have been able to compensate for a tailwheel shimmy at touchdown by reducing the weight on the tailwheel. The condition of the tailwheel locking mechanism should have been checked during the last annual inspection; however, it is possible that the locking mechanism could have worn further during the 7 months between the most recent inspection and the accident flight.
Probable cause
The disengagement of the tailwheel locking mechanism during the landing roll due to wear, and a subsequent loss of directional control. Contributing was the pilot's inadequate remedial action, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA174
- Event ID
- 20160503X12400
- Case number
- ERA16LA174
- 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: 12972db92c78864731bd50f3e757e143198f32360e118a0fd2c3d2858c321621; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:20:43.440Z.