DEN00LA173 · Maule M-7-235C
Maule M-7-235C · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA173
- 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 M-7-235C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-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
- N4255P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Junction Regional Airport (GJT), Grand Junction, COTo 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- 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 pilot made two low passes over the east-west runway, one in each direction. The third pass was made to the east at an approach speed of 65 mph, using 40 degrees of flaps. The airplane stalled 4 to 6 feet above, and 100 to 200 feet down, the 900-foot long runway. The airplane contacted the left side of the runway in a 3-point attitude. The left main gear went through tall grass and into a small ditch. Full power was applied to abort the landing. The pilot turned the airplane 40 degrees to the right in an attempt to avoid a juniper tree at the end of the runway, but the left wing struck its branches, damaging the outer one-third of the wing leading edge. The airplane went through a barbed wire fence, across a gravel road, then went through another barbed wire fence before coming to a halt in a field.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the landing flare and roll. Factors were the tree and fences.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA173
- Event ID
- 20001212X21957
- Case number
- DEN00LA173
- 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: fc873998c39a470f067ff9ffe5a6e058061694df1dbfe5e3b2e83e3253b2eb18; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:26:43.298Z.