ERA13CA369 · Maule M-5-210C
Maule M-5-210C · Accident: hard landing
From Becks Grove Airport (K16) to Hamilton Municipal Airport (VGC)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA369
- 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-5-210C
- 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
- N6617R
- Operator
- Moore Thomas R
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Becks Grove Airport (K16), Rome, NYTo Hamilton Municipal Airport (VGC), Hamilton, NY
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 stated after takeoff while en route to the destination airport he elected to fly to a private airstrip (Bates Field) located in rolling farmland. He lined up onto base leg for landing to the northwest on the upslope grass runway, and turned onto final approach. With 40 degrees of flaps extended, he identified the intended touchdown point, flared, and then climbed to attain the intended touchdown point. He landed, “but too hard and bounced up…,” touched down on the runway, and drifted off the runway into 6 to 8 inch high grass. He added power to abort the landing but impacted a knoll at the top of a crest on a hill, then continued climbing. While safely airborne he assessed the condition of the airplane noting the pilot and co-pilot doors were ajar, but did not find any other damage. He flew over the private airstrip and did not observe any damage then elected to proceed to his destination airport, where he landed uneventfully. While taxiing after landing he noticed the left landing gear was out of position. He further stated there was no preimpact mechanical failure or malfunction that caused the hard landing.
Inspection of the airplane by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed damage and distortion to structural tubing in the cockpit, and wrinkles in the fabric adjacent to the left main landing gear.
Probable cause
The pilot’s delay in applying power after a bounced landing, resulting in collision with terrain during a go-around.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA369
- Event ID
- 20130821X02555
- Case number
- ERA13CA369
- 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, 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: 967cf2570cd46a6cda86185f97e04322c425fb03f488a6d4a0c99474c55df806; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:34:46.388Z.