CEN20FA008 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Brennand Airport (79C) to Martins Aerodrome (WI78)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20FA008
- 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
- 1
- 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 7AC
- Aircraft type
- Aeronca 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
- N82308
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brennand Airport (79C), Neenah, WITo Martins Aerodrome (WI78), Green Bay, WI
- Aircraft age
- About 73 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was on short final approach for landing to the grass runway. The south end of the runway was bordered by an east-west oriented road; witnesses on this road and dashboard camera video from another vehicle confirmed that the airplane was flying about 5 ft above the ground when it collided with the front left side of a westbound truck. The airplane became lodged on top of the truck and they continued off the right side of the road, through a ditch, and came to rest in a residential front yard. The pilot and driver were both fatally injured during the accident sequence. A postaccident examination of the airplane did not reveal any mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. There were several propeller slash marks on the front left side of the truck, consistent with the propeller rotating during the collision. There was no evidence of tire skid marks on the road and none of the witnesses reported any evasive maneuvers by the airplane; therefore, it is likely that neither the pilot nor the driver was aware of the impending collision. Additionally, there was no roadway signage warning of low-flying aircraft.
Probable cause
The pilot’s low final approach path and his failure to see and avoid a truck traveling on a roadway, which resulted in a collision with the truck.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20FA008
- Event ID
- 20191017X95817
- Case number
- CEN20FA008
- 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, cause areas. 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: aad2006149b2af9771b9bea9122d00de934c995f08fa7fb1e9c74dd0b002bbe6; retrieved 2026-09-13T17:59:09.051Z.