FTW96LA218 · Maule MX-7-160
Maule MX-7-160 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Garland, AR (no airport) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA218
- 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
Maule MX-7-160
- Aircraft type
- Maule MX-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
- N35TX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garland, AR (no airport)To No airport
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 final
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airplane was landing at a private airfield on a runway facing the east. The pilot reported he flew the airplane in a 'right hand traffic pattern in order to watch the two windsocks south of the runway and to make sure the tractor that was mowing nearby would remain clear of the runway.' The airplane was on final, with a right cross wind, when the following sequence of events occurred. The pilot stated, 'the aircraft drifted to the north, but I corrected it back, when suddenly a strong gust blew the plane north of the runway. The right wing dropped quickly while we continued to drift left as I added power to execute another go around. The plane continued to drop right wing low, despite my efforts to avoid hitting the ground. The engine accelerated normally, but we struck the ground off to the left of the runway, right wing low.' The airplane came to rest on a heading of approximately 260 degrees on the north side of the runway.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control in flight. A factor was the gusty wind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA218
- Event ID
- 20001208X05768
- Case number
- FTW96LA218
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 5611d1d40b3290fc4ac6a9ff7c1b788ab9e998ea9c28995cfc0eec34098babff; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:50:08.348Z.