CEN11LA086 · Maule M-5-180C
Maule M-5-180C · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA) to Emory, TX (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA086
- 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
- 1 · 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-5-180C
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-5
- 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
- N244RC
- Operator
- John R. Armstrong · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Durant Regional Airport - Eaker Field (DUA), Durant, OKTo Emory, TX (no airport)
- 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
- Approach · VFR go-around
- Defining eventThe 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 in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to a witness, the airplane bounced twice during landing before power was applied, and the airplane climbed to an altitude of 100 feet. The witness observed the airplane "wobble" left and right, before it banked to the left and entered a spin. The airplane impacted the terrain in a near-vertical attitude and was destroyed in the ensuing postcrash fire. Witness reports and recorded weather observations indicated the presence of a gusty crosswind at the time of the accident. The accident occurred on the pilot's private airstrip; however, he had limited experience operating from the airstrip, and he also had limited experience in the accident airplane. According to the pilot's family, prior to recently purchasing the airplane, he had not flown for 25 years.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control and failure to attain/maintain adequate airspeed during an attempted go-around after a hard bounced landing, resulting in an aerodynamic stall. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s recent minimal experience in airplane make/model and in operations at the grass airstrip.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA086
- Event ID
- 20101130X23757
- Case number
- CEN11LA086
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: 7ec91cd5f0da7633da8407c11678265c7504ed1548bca5923c1bb8e0f1473e48; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:09:51.015Z.