ERA18LA040 · Champion 7EC
Champion 7EC · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Jackson County Airport (I18) to Jackson County Airport (I18)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA040
- 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
- 0
- 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 7EC
- 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
- N7586E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson County Airport (I18), Ravenswood, WVTo Jackson County Airport (I18), Ravenswood, WV
- Aircraft age
- About 59 years (built 1958)
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot completed one circuit in the traffic pattern that was uneventful, then performed a three-point landing. As the airplane's speed decreased, it began to veer to the right side of the runway. The pilot applied left aileron and full left rudder; however, the airplane continued off the right side of the runway. He applied full power to attempt to abort the landing, but the airplane went down an embankment before it came to rest, which resulted in substantial damage to the right wing, right horizontal stabilizer, right elevator, and fuselage. The right main landing gear separated from the airplane during the accident sequence and, therefore, could not be tested. Although the pilot stated that the right brake "seized upon landing," an examination of the brake system did not reveal any evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Thus, it is likely that the pilot lost control of the airplane during the landing roll, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the airplane during the landing roll, which resulted in a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA040
- Event ID
- 20171202X11405
- Case number
- ERA18LA040
- 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: bec8ed9003424f9f9b669a047bf3aed84bf7a5ee20a677d39af84c5980bf81e2; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:03:37.198Z.