ERA16CA197 · American Champion Aircraft 7GCBC
American Champion Aircraft 7GCBC · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC while maneuvering
From Gadabout Gaddis Airport (ME08) to North Canaan Aviation Facilities Inc Airport (CT24)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16CA197
- 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 7GCBC
- 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
- N80RK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gadabout Gaddis Airport (ME08), Bingham, METo North Canaan Aviation Facilities Inc Airport (CT24), North Canaan, CT
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 1996)
- 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
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was conducting a local sightseeing flight in visual meteorological conditions when the airplane inadvertently entered instrument meteorological conditions. While maneuvering, he lost visual reference with the ground. The airplane entered a steep descending turn, and collided trees. Both wings separated from the airframe and the fuselage was crushed. Weather conditions reported at an airport that was located about 17 nautical miles from the accident site, included, overcast clouds at 1,100 feet above ground level. The elevation of the accident site was about 1,700 feet mean sea level. The pilot reported that he experienced no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
An encounter with instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in the pilot's spatial disorientation and a loss of airplane control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16CA197
- Event ID
- 20160531X11910
- Case number
- ERA16CA197
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: ba2942854cbcb1264a3708ed969ab9df30a66acb453f42c7995b10140693325a; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:26:34.748Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Wrong state; CT24 is a Connecticut identifier and North Canaan is in Connecticut.