ANC07LA081 · Maule M-7-235
Maule M-7-235 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From Chena Marina Airport (AK28) to Chena Marina Airport (AK28)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07LA081
- 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-7-235
- 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
- N56568
- Operator
- Richard F. Sterling · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chena Marina Airport (AK28), Fairbanks, AKTo Chena Marina Airport (AK28)
- 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
- Dual student › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Flt control syst, elevator control cable/rod › Reversed
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight instructor (CFI) was giving a flight review to a private pilot, in the private pilot's airplane. The airplane had an annual inspection during which the elevator was removed and replaced, and this was the first flight since the repairs. The CFI said that during the takeoff roll, as soon as the private pilot moved the yoke aft, the airplane nosed over, and came to rest inverted. An FAA inspector did a postaccident inspection, revealing that the elevator cables were connected backwards, reversing the control yoke actions, and resulting in down elevator when the yoke was pulled aft. The CFI reported that he and the private pilot did a preflight inspection of the airplane, but failed to check for the correct travel of the airplane's elevator. In his written statement to the NTSB, the CFI wrote, in part: "The elevator is hard or impossible to see while being buckled in the aircraft, but [it] should have been discovered."
Probable cause
The reversal of the elevator control cables by maintenance personnel, and the inadequate preflight inspection by the flight instructor and dual student.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07LA081
- Event ID
- 20070823X01232
- Case number
- ANC07LA081
- 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 2007-08-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 62d2fbe0ce0d2df97dfb04acf68ea3a2c905a872eb217844962332901338712d; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:45:30.846Z.