WPR24LA094 · Aeronca 7AC
Aeronca 7AC · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Calaveras Co Maury Rasmussen Field (KCPU) to Franklin Field (KF72)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA094
- 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
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
- N1611E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Calaveras Co Maury Rasmussen Field (KCPU), San Andreas, CATo Franklin Field (KF72), Elk Grove, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 78 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that en route to her destination, she was practicing low-altitude ground reference maneuvers. The last maneuver ended with the airplane in a box canyon. The airplane had insufficient altitude, airspeed, and distance from the canyon walls to turn around. As the airplane approached the end of the canyon, she realized the airplane would not be able to out-climb the rising terrain. She looked for a clear spot to land and reduced the throttle to idle while shutting off the fuel. The pilot tried to maneuver to avoid taller terrain and touched down in between trees with the wings impacting them. During the accident sequence, the airplane incurred substantial damage to the wings. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to maneuver the airplane at a low altitude and inadvertently entering a box canyon where the airplane could not outclimb the rising terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA094
- Event ID
- 20240223193832
- Case number
- WPR24LA094
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-02-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 563e6a8ead0dcf6191372f290690bc306bbc14750577b4c075add431b2e4db43; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:32:13.379Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. City slot holds the airport/county name; CPU is Calaveras County Airport at San Andreas, CA.