IAD97LA003 · Maule MX-7
Maule MX-7 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From 0000 · NY to Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA003
- 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
- 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
- N6124Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0000 · NYTo Danbury Municipal Airport (DXR), Danbury, CT
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot and passenger flew to a private airstrip and completed two full stop landings to the south on the turf runway. After a brief stop, the pilot noticed that the active runway had changed to the north. He taxied to the south end of the runway, completed engine checks, and set 24 degrees of flaps. The pilot stated, 'as I fully opened the throttle, I held back-pressure and some right rudder to maximize tail-wheel steering.' The pilot stated that 'the south end of the field was much rougher than he expected, and after a strong bounce, the airplane remained airborne in ground effect.' Also, the pilot stated that he was so focused on the airplane's lack of acceleration, that he did not realize it was headed directly towards a stand of saplings. The airplane impacted the trees in a wings level attitude less than 10 feet off the ground. The airplane had traveled a distance of less than 700 feet, and drifted off the left side of the turf runway. Winds recorded at an airport 18 miles to the south were from 130 degrees at 8 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control during takeoff, which resulted in a inflight collision with trees (sapplings). A factor related to the accident was: the quartering tailwind that was encountered during takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA003
- Event ID
- 20001208X06900
- Case number
- IAD97LA003
- 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: 8e14effa02f15d8de532575f498c5beb19797fdea3b4ceee3df2faaa56228f79; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:00:00.288Z.