CEN16FA240 · Aeronca 11AC
Aeronca 11AC · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From William Tiny Zehnder Field (66G) to William Tiny Zehnder Field (66G)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16FA240
- 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
- 2 · 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
Aeronca 11AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 11
- 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
- N86078
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William Tiny Zehnder Field (66G), Frankenmuth, MITo William Tiny Zehnder Field (66G), Frankenmuth, MI
- 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger were on a local pleasure flight in a single-engine airplane. A witness reported that the pilot was doing touch-and-go landings. The wind was calm, so the pilot departed to the east and then returned to land to the west. The witness did not see the crash but heard the impact and then saw smoke. The airplane impacted a cornfield about 1/4 mile east of the airport. A postcrash fire consumed or thermally damaged the majority of the airplane. The fire and impact damage limited the scope of the examination; however, no evidence of pre-impact abnormalities was noted with the engine or airframe. The pilot's autopsy and toxicology testing found no evidence of any medical condition or medication use that would have impaired his performance, and he had favorable weather conditions for the flight. The accident was consistent with the pilot's loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control for undetermined reasons based on available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16FA240
- Event ID
- 20160704X55622
- Case number
- CEN16FA240
- 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, coordinates. 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: 3c3a7444ec0ea6a3b3b046a90682ebdb92e055322f74b98b5c54c4974ba0f310; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:52:17.974Z.