ERA22FA426 · Champion AERONCA 7AC
Champion AERONCA 7AC · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin during initial climb
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22FA426
- 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
- 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 AERONCA 7AC
- Aircraft type
- Champion 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
- N2716E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
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 and pilot-rated passenger were departing on a local personal flight. Witnesses stated that the as the airplane departed the engine did not sound like it was creating full power. During the initial climb, the airplane briefly climbed at a steep angle then turned left, descended, and impacted the ground about 500 ft from the departure end of the runway. Postaccident examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have prevented normal engine operation. Given the witness statements, and the findings of the postaccident engine examination, it could not be determined whether there was a partial loss of engine power during the takeoff. Nevertheless, the conditions about the time of the accident, given the temperature and dew point, were favorable for serious carburetor icing at a glide power setting. Given this information, it is possible that during the ground operation, when the engine would typically be operating at low power, carburetor ice formed. This could have resulted in at least a partial loss of engine power during the initial climb. The available evidence for this investigation did not indicate whether or not the pilot applied carburetor heat before or during the flight. The witness reports of the airplane briefly climbing at a steep angle, the video showing the airplane in a steep descending left turn, as well as the signatures observed on the wreckage (aft crushing of the forward portion of the fuselage, the relatively uniform aft crush damage on the leading edges of both wings, and damage consistent with a relatively low energy state at the time of impact) were all consistent with the airplane encountering an aerodynamic stall before it impacted the ground. Given that there were no anomalies observed with the airplane’s flight controls during the postaccident wreckage examination, it is likely that the pilot exceeded the airplane’s critical angle of attack at an altitude too low to recover, which resulted in the subsequent loss of control and impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's exceedance of the airplane’s critical angle of attack shortly after takeoff, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall, loss of control, and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22FA426
- Event ID
- 20220919105965
- Case number
- ERA22FA426
- 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: 2dcb6e743959e5cea426938ab39c267efadfa9270e4c614f8881f860145cb558; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:51:29.254Z.