ANC01LA131 · Maule M-7-235B
Maule M-7-235B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From KOLIGANEK, AK to Port Alsworth Airport (PALJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA131
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-7-235B
- 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
- N1007U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From KOLIGANEK, AKTo Port Alsworth Airport (PALJ), PORT ALSWORTH, AK
- 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
- In flight 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 › Aborted takeoff, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private certificated pilot was departing a remote lake in a float-equipped airplane. The lake is about 1,500 feet long, and is a location the pilot has operated from in the past. The pilot said he taxied into the middle of the lake several times to check the wind conditions before takeoff. The wind appeared to shift from the northwest, to the west, about 12 knots. The pilot said he initiated one takeoff run, but aborted the takeoff. His second takeoff included a step turn toward the south, during which the airplane seemed to lose a slight amount of speed. The pilot decided to lower the flaps to assist in getting off the water and he reached for the flap handle. The pilot said that as he reached for the handle, he realized he was reaching for the area of the airplane where the flap handle is normally installed in his other airplane, a Piper PA-18. He was distracted by not finding the flap handle in the accident airplane. The airplane became airborne, but collided with the bank of the lake. The airplane was then launched upward in a steep nose-up attitude, and the pilot said a stall was eminent. He lowered the nose of the airplane, but the airplane rolled to the left, and collided with the ground. The left float assembly, the left wing, and fuselage were damaged.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in aborting the takeoff. A factor in the accident was the pilot's diverted attention during the takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA131
- Event ID
- 20010913X01932
- Case number
- ANC01LA131
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2c62f728b1f4bcb93c7bbb3cfb081d5ee363d4e3dca451d348f1b55f971c8fd1; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:36:14.134Z.