ERA23LA167 · Champion 7FC
Champion 7FC · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure on approach
From Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF) to Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA167
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 7FC
- 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
- N6ND
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF), Winter Haven, FLTo Winter Haven Regional Airport - Gilbert Field (GIF), Winter Haven, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 64 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 purpose of the flight was for the pilot to practice touch-and-go landings in the tailwheel-equipped, tandem-seat airplane. Following nine uneventful landings, the pilot reported that he entered the traffic pattern at the destination airport. While on the base leg in the traffic pattern for landing he felt that the flight controls were “noticeably weird.” He aborted the landing attempt and tried to maneuver the airplane away from the airport. The pilot described that the airplane would not bank to the right and was descending, despite the engine power being at 2,200 rpm. The airplane continued in a left bank and the pilot was unable to level the wings, and despite application of aft elevator control input, he was unable to arrest the descent. The airplane continued toward a pasture and struck the ground left bank before striking trees. The airplane’s left wing sustained substantial damage during the impact. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. He added that when he was examining the airplane after the accident, he noted that the rear seat headset had become unstowed and had, “fallen onto / and around” the right rear rudder pedal. Based on this information, it is likely that the unsecured headset obstructed the movement of the rudder controls, resulting in the airplane’s uncommanded left bank.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly secure the rear seat headset, resulting in an obstruction of the airplane’s rudder controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA167
- Event ID
- 20230328106966
- Case number
- ERA23LA167
- 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: 934d63baa45b79768e93ed2f30a2fd88904bf0b0f338ed0f7f3ebce0c73da2c0; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:27:36.473Z.