Grasshopper Aviation Maule M-7-235 accident
Maule M-7-235 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during landing
From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ) to Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02LA099
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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-7-235
- 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
- N897M
- Operator
- Grasshopper Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ), Palmer, AKTo Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAQ), Palmer, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Landing gear, axle › Fractured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was landing the tundra-tire equipped airplane atop a mountain ridge. During the landing roll on the rough and uneven terrain, the right main landing gear axle broke allowing the right wheel to separate from the airplane. The airplane pivoted to the right, and the left wing struck the ground. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. Following retrieval of the airplane, an FAA airworthiness inspector examined the broken axle. He reported that a visual inspection of the broken landing gear axle revealed that the fracture traveled through a drilled hole in the axle. The FAA inspector said that the drilled hole is used when the airplane has a wheel/ski kit installed. He added that there was a substantial amount of corrosion and rust within and around the fracture surface. The operator reported that the time in service of the failed landing gear axle was about 2,500 hours, and the time since inspection was about 1,800 hours.
Probable cause
The fracture of the right main landing gear axle during landing roll. Factors associated with the accident were corrosion of the landing gear axle, failure of company maintenance personnel to adequately inspect the axle and detect the corrosion, and rough and uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02LA099
- Event ID
- 20020904X01523
- Case number
- ANC02LA099
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: a768a8034db7df468fd8c3a3250060751a7fdf0ca76df92128571ee93c02cce2; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:59:12.862Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N897M; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.