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ANC13LA049 · Maule M-6-235

19 May 2013 · Big Lake, AK, United States

Maule M-6-235 · Accident: hard landing

From Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED) to Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED)

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Event

NTSB case
ANC13LA049
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-6-235

Aircraft type
Maule M-6
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
N56464
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED), Anchorage, AKTo Elmendorf Air Force Base (PAED), Anchorage, AK
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
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
Hard landing
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

  • Personnel issues › Task performance

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot was practicing stop-and-go landings on the gravel-covered runway. Upon touchdown, the right main gear separated at the axle housing, which pivoted the airplane to the right as the main landing gear leg dug into the runway. The airplane subsequently nosed down and came to rest on the propeller spinner and left wing. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the left wing and lift struts. A postaccident examination revealed that the right main landing gear axle separated at the axle housing and main landing gear leg attachment point. Visual and magnified optical examinations of the fractured surfaces revealed features consistent with a bending overstress fracture, indicating that the pilot most likely executed a hard landing, which resulted in the fracture of the right main axle housing and the subsequent nosedown.

Probable cause

The pilot’s execution of a hard landing, which resulted in the overstress fracture of the right main axle housing and the subsequent nosedown.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ANC13LA049
Event ID
20130521X80914
Case number
ANC13LA049
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: eb319728f1a5224be9e124119e53b4ed49cc2aaf0066ef610bdd5ffb97619f30; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:37:55.024Z.