MIA00LA038 · Maule MX-7-160
Maule MX-7-160 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA038
- 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
- N9235N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), PALM BCH GARDEN, FLTo 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Stall/spin
- 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 › Control interference, encountered
- Pilot of other aircraft › Procedures/directives, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The glider pilot stated that he could not get a towline release at the prebriefed release altitude of 3,000 feet agl, and kept trying until he did effect a release at about 1,200 feet agl. The tow pilot stated that they were still in the towed climb at about 2,800 feet agl, when he experienced an abrupt pull up to the right by the glider that caused a stall and spin of the tow airplane. The towline was finally released simultaneously at about 1,200 feet agl, by both aircraft, and the glider made it back to the gliderport for a normal landing. The tow pilot recovered from the spin at about 700 feet agl, but the engine quit running in the spin, and there was no time to get it restarted. The tow airplane performed a forced landing to a swamp area.
Probable cause
The sailplane pilot's failure to comply with standard emergency procedures for 'sailplane release failure' upon its occurrence and his maneuvering of the sailplane while still tethered to the tow plane resulting in the inflight loss of control and engine stoppage of the tow airplane during it's uncontrolled descent and inflight collision with trees and swampland.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA038
- Event ID
- 20001212X20284
- Case number
- MIA00LA038
- 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: df0d7c03c1d0e07b43d8fc17be24ec00ec82d47775003c3c312ea78792f6dd3d; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:34:35.129Z.