WPR26LA165 · Aeronca 7FC
Aeronca 7FC · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Madras Municipal Airport (S33) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA165
- 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 7FC
- 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
- N7541B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madras Municipal Airport (S33), Madras, ORTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 69 years (built 1957)
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 of the tailwheel equipped airplane reported that during the landing roll, the airplane veered to the left and exited the runway. The pilot applied right rudder input and increased engine power to raise the tail as he maneuvered the airplane toward the runway surface. As the airplane rolled onto the runway surface, it veered to the right, exited the runway, and continued onto the parallel taxiway. The pilot firmly applied both brakes to avoid a fuel island and the airplane subsequently nosed over, which resulted in substantial damage to both wings and rudder. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. At the time of the accident, the pilot was landing on runway 16, with light and variable wind. The pilot reported that there was a helicopter to the left of the runway on a parallel taxiway and felt that its rotor wash was a factor in the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control during landing roll. Contributing to the accident was the rotor wash from a nearby helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA165
- Event ID
- 20260421202857
- Case number
- WPR26LA165
- 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, 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: 33b697b501f6ae4cbb6b1068e07a54bb5c4f4c3634b247dd074e35f6ae3bca02; retrieved 2026-09-16T21:18:13.131Z.