NYC99LA135 · Maule M7-235C
Maule M7-235C · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From DDH to Albany International Airport (ALB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA135
- 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 M7-235C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M7
- 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
- N126MC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From DDHTo Albany International Airport (ALB), Albany, NY
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/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
- Passenger › Control interference
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bennington, VT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
During the takeoff roll, the airplane drifted to the left of the runway centerline, and the pilot applied right rudder. The airplane then went towards the right side of the runway, and when the pilot attempted to apply left rudder, it would not depress. As the airplane departed the right side of the runway, the pilot observed that the right front passenger's right foot was extended onto the right rudder pedal. The airplane went into a ditch, and flipped over. In the NTSB Form 6120.1/2, the pilot stated that in the future, his pre-flight preparation would include telling passengers to keep their hands and feet away from the controls. Examination of the wreckage did not reveal any pre-impact malfunctions of the engine or airframe, which included the airplane's flight controls.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate pre-flight briefing which resulted in control interference by the right front seat passenger.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA135
- Event ID
- 20001212X18880
- Case number
- NYC99LA135
- 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: 5f835604b700cae3193300ef8c827ec94974163656a1c6450db86704a5bc663d; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:01:59.371Z.