ERA18LA210 · Champion 7GCAA
United Aerial Advertising Of Delaware In Champion 7GCAA · Accident: fuel related while maneuvering
From Lakewood Airport (N12) to Lakewood Airport (N12)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA210
- 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 7GCAA
- 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
- N87000
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lakewood Airport (N12), Lakewood, NJTo Lakewood Airport (N12), Lakewood, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1974)
- 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
- Fuel related
- 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
- 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 reported that the preflight check, ground operations, and subsequent 2-hour banner-towing flight were uneventful. On final approach, before dropping the banner, about 500 ft above ground level (agl), he reduced the throttle to idle as the airplane descended towards the runway. When the airplane was about tree height, he pitched up and added full throttle, preparing to drop the banner. He stated, "the engine continued to operate but produced very limited power while making abnormal combustion sounds." He verified the mixture was full rich and the throttle was full forward, then released the banner. The airplane was flying low and slow, so he pitched down and elected to land straight ahead. The airplane impacted small pine trees and terrain and the forward portion of the fuselage was substantially damaged. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal engine operation. The weather conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to the formation of serious carburetor icing at glide engine power settings. The pilot reported that, during the approach, he did not apply carburetor heat and the engine did not produce as much power as expected as he attempted to increase power after dropping the banner. Therefore, it is likely that carburetor ice accumulated during approach, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to use carburetor heat in weather conditions conducive to carburetor icing, which resulted in a partial loss of engine power due to the formation of carburetor ice, a forced landing and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA210
- Event ID
- 20180804X33640
- Case number
- ERA18LA210
- 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: 6dc4e276edf8810f1a3c6356b7284e36e7b64c91a8ed5db65b30e918b3f482a7; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:02:45.336Z.