SEA05CA131 · Maule M-7-235B
Maule M-7-235B · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From La Grande, OR to Hermiston Municipal Airport (HRI)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05CA131
- 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
- N333DD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From La Grande, ORTo Hermiston Municipal Airport (HRI), Hermiston, OR
- 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not possible
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 reported that during the take off ground roll on the sod covered airstrip, the left main wheel hit something, possibly a badger hole. The pilot stated that be began to lose directional control, so he pulled the airplane into the air. The airplane remained airborne for a few seconds, then touched down hard on the left main wheel again. The pilot was able to get the airplane airborne and circled the airstrip. A person on the ground was in radio contact with the pilot and reported that the left main gear was collapsed. At this time there appeared to be no other damage and the pilot decided to fly to another airport with a paved runway. The pilot set-up for a landing in a "full stall 2-point landing on the right side of the runway." When the left side came down on the collapsed gear, the aircraft slid off the left side of the runway and turned about 45 degrees to the left before coming to a stop. During the landing roll, the airplane sustained a propeller strike and the left side horizontal stabilizer contacted the surface resulting in substantial damage.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during the takeoff ground roll which resulted in overload damage to the main landing gear. During the landing roll, it was not possible to maintain aircraft control due to the previously damaged gear. Encounter with rough terrain during the takeoff ground roll, and an overloaded and subsequently collapsed main landing gear were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05CA131
- Event ID
- 20050707X00948
- Case number
- SEA05CA131
- 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: bdef4a6de9cce61ef0b27d78f7ee8fe3615f73ab0af90be18b1640b4cc78c8ae; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:44:23.960Z.