DEN03LA080 · Maule MX-7-235
Maule MX-7-235 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Everitt Airport (1CO8) to FTG · Watkins, CO
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA080
- 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 MX-7-235
- 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
- N44UG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Everitt Airport (1CO8), Parker, COTo FTG · Watkins, CO
- 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
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot wanted to practice crosswind landings. He made a normal crosswind approach and landing on runway 17. The wind at Denver International Airport, located 10 miles to the northwest, was from 110 degrees at 12 knots. Upon touchdown, the pilot held full left aileron and full aft elevator and maintained directional control with the rudder. As the airplane rolled out, it began drifting to the right, so the pilot reduced right rudder input. The nose "swung left quickly" into the wind and the pilot applied full right rudder. The airplane ground looped to the left causing substantial damage to the airplane's wings and propeller. The pilot said he suspected that the tail wheel was or had become unlocked. Using the pilot's wind estimate and the recorded wind at Denver International Airport, the computed crosswind component was approximately 7 and 10 knots, respectively. According to the Maule Aircraft Company, the maximum demonstrated crosswind component for the MX-7-235 is 14 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain directional control of the aircraft during the landing roll out. Contributing factors were the unlocked tailwheel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA080
- Event ID
- 20030513X00650
- Case number
- DEN03LA080
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-04-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6ed6cc9c6c4033b2f026d1019200138c533e5124a2172444959af13fb5bb9e73; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:24:05.869Z.