SEA07CA104 · Maule MT-7-235
Maule MT-7-235 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From San Martin Airport (E16) to Buchanan Field (CCR)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA104
- 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 MT-7-235
- Aircraft type
- Maule MT-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
- N3115U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Martin Airport (E16), Morgan Hill, CATo Buchanan Field (CCR), Concord, CA
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 reported that the tower informed him the winds were from 250 degrees at 25 mph with gusts up to 30 mph. He aborted his first approach to runway 19R. On the second approach, he had "good rudder and aileron control at the 80 mph approach speed." At approximately 40 feet above ground level (agl), he encountered "a strong wind shear" and the airplane dropped to an altitude of 10 feet agl. The pilot added power and landed the airplane on the runway. At that time, a "very strong gust of wind" lifted the right wing and pushed the airplane towards the left side of the runway. The pilot attempted to regain control, however, he was not successful, and the airplane continued to the left "into a ground loop off of the runway." The nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane came to rest nose down. The recorded winds at the airport near the time of the accident were from 260 degrees at 24 knots with gusts to 30 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing, resulting in a ground loop/swerve and collapse of the nose landing gear. A contributing factor was the gusty wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA104
- Event ID
- 20070514X00559
- Case number
- SEA07CA104
- 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: b6b1cbd75bcf81b22a5ff23e33984163a22fe3a32ac0adc36b25845cf03ea9b8; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:54:06.564Z.