CEN19FA138 · Champion 7GCAA
Champion 7GCAA · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during takeoff
From Schlater, MS (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA138
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N7665S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Schlater, MS (private airstrip)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1976)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was departing from a private airstrip with a light tailwind present. A witness at the airstrip saw the airplane lift off the ground, northbound, about 1,500 ft down the runway; the airplane flew another 500 ft before it pitched up. The airplane was about 100 ft above the ground and not climbing when it banked left and then turned right. The airplane nose pitched down and the airplane entered a dive and subsequently impacted terrain.
The airplane came to rest on its nose and its engine was embedded in terrain. Examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded control of the airplane.
Given the available information, it is likely that the pilot failed to maintain the proper airspeed during the initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in the exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and the airplane experiencing an aerodynamic stall at too low of an altitude to recover. Investigators were not able to determine why the airplane was on the ground for 1,500 ft before it rotated and took off.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper airspeed during the initial climb after takeoff, which resulted in an exceedance of the airplane's critical angle of attack and a stall.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN19FA138
- Event ID
- 20190507X30329
- Case number
- CEN19FA138
- 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: a316dcbdf979be249f1212c1f786733113ea4b05dedfef7196f3677e73bd5cbc; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:57:41.170Z.