CEN20CA310 · Champion 7GCBC
Champion 7GCBC · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Tri State Steuben County Airport (ANQ) to Tri State Steuben County Airport (ANQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA310
- 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 7GCBC
- 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
- N86614
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tri State Steuben County Airport (ANQ), Angola, INTo Tri State Steuben County Airport (ANQ), Angola, IN
- Aircraft age
- About 46 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- 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 while performing a low-level pass parallel to the runway in the airplane, he allowed himself to become distracted. The airplane started drifting to the right and he found himself, "fighting the controls not realizing I cross controlled the control surfaces." The pilot felt a sink develop and applied full power with right rudder, but the right wing "unloaded." The pilot attempted to recover; however, he reported the airplane was too low and slow, an aerodynamic stall occurred, and the airplane impacted a grass field. The airplane, which was not equipped with a stall warning system nor was it required to be, sustained substantial damage to the right wing and the fuselage. The pilot reported there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe and engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a low-level pass, resulting in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack that caused an aerodynamic stall and subsequent impact with terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's distraction during the low-level pass.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA310
- Event ID
- 20200725X21035
- Case number
- CEN20CA310
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-07-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1f0cb2fec24fb5cb067d47b422c57996734c2f719cb60bc34a38b746c84d8365; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:16:24.662Z.