WPR23LA348 · Champion 7KCAB
Champion 7KCAB · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA348
- 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
- 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 7KCAB
- 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
- N998B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95), Benson, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 56 years (built 1967)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After conducting an engine run-up and full-deflection flight control check before the flight, the flight instructor and pilot receiving instruction departed the runway on a local instructional flight in the tailwheel-equipped airplane. Just after takeoff the airplane began to drift right and then suddenly rolled sharply to the right. The airplane’s attitude was held briefly before the flight instructor took over the controls. The flight instructor discovered that the aileron controls were unresponsive. He immediately added left rudder and the wings leveled off. The airplane then started a left roll followed by a right roll. The airplane lost altitude and impacted the ground, resulting in substantial damage to the wings. The pilot reported that the inflight event felt like they were in wake turbulence of a mountain rotor or vortex, or a dust devil. Examination of the airplane’s flight controls did not reveal any anomalies. The reason for the loss of directional control after takeoff could not be determined. Official weather reporting stations in the area showed no significant wind conditions at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilots’ failure to maintain control of the aircraft during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA348
- Event ID
- 20230919193101
- Case number
- WPR23LA348
- 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: 801c9fdbfa04a15af32378a20ffadc3db7a955cf1e3026120982aa2ed7e48d8e; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:08:28.881Z.