CHI97LA176 · Maule M5C
Maule M5C · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Surfside Seaplane Base (8Y4) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA176
- 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 M5C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M5
- 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
- N5643Y
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Surfside Seaplane Base (8Y4)To not recorded
- 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 · roll/run
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- 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(cfi) › Aborted takeoff, not performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › All available runway, not used
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Lowering of flaps, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner/pilot had just purchased the airplane, and was seeking instruction in the aircraft to fulfill his insurance requirements. He referenced the Pilot's Operating Handbook and noted to the CFI that the configuration for takeoffs in water was with 35 degrees of flaps. The CFI responded that only 15 degrees of flaps were needed. The owner reported, 'during the takeoff run it seemed to me that we had difficulty getting on a good step situation.' The owner further said, 'at the point where an aborted takeoff should have been executed, I saw him [CFI] reach for what I was certain would be the power and an aborted takeoff. Instead, he [CFI] reached for the flap handle and put the flaps at 35 degrees and horsed back on the controls so that the nose did come up, but there was no way we could avoid hitting the shore which was covered with bull bushes.' The airplane contacted the high grasses, nosed over, and came to rest inverted 150 feet from the shoreline. The CFI reported, 'I was a little too late in aborting the takeoff.' The seaplane base operator reported that the CFI elected to use a shortened portion of the lake for the takeoff run, and could have extended the takeoff run by a half a mile by changing the takeoff heading by ten degrees.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's inadequate preflight planning/preparation, his the improper lowering of flaps for takeoff, his failure to use a longer available area for takeoff, and his failure to abort the takeoff before there was an insufficient amount of area remaining to abort. The encounter with high vegetation was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA176
- Event ID
- 20001208X08089
- Case number
- CHI97LA176
- 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: 916456ddd57084130bd824e1ca0795086f4b2cf235d9dc6b82fa2d4c12e41ceb; retrieved 2026-09-22T19:24:59.027Z.