WPR26LA114 · American Champion Aircraft 8GCBC
American Champion Aircraft 8GCBC · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Payson, AZ to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA114
- 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
American Champion Aircraft 8GCBC
- Aircraft type
- American Champion 8
- 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
- N636DB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Payson, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2023)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he landed the tailwheel equipped airplane at a backcountry airstrip, and while taxiing on rough terrain, the tailwheel spring failed and the tailwheel assembly separated from the airplane. The pilot shut down the airplane and exited to inspect and retrieve the tailwheel assembly. He then decided to depart, using engine power to lift the tail off the ground for the take-off roll, and return to his home airport where he planned to land and hold the airplane’s tail off the ground as long as possible. The pilot completed a successful wheel landing, but as the airplane slowed during the landing roll it tipped forward and nosed over, coming to rest inverted on the dirt runway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage frame, wings, vertical stabilizer, ailerons, elevators, rudder, and wing lift struts. The pilot reported that he may have inadvertently applied more main-wheel braking pressure than necessary while trying to keep the tail off the ground, which resulted in the airplane nosing over. Other than the previously damaged tailwheel assembly, the pilot reported no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to operate the airplane with a known mechanical defect, and the improper application of the main wheel brakes, which resulted in the airplane nosing over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA114
- Event ID
- 20260302202583
- Case number
- WPR26LA114
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-03-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 901e27cb53bdb1dc73406e85abd2929b42bfe55e396abf8c916ae96c210061c0; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:53:29.598Z.