ERA13CA400 · Maxair Drifter DRIFTER II
Maxair Drifter DRIFTER II · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Lafayette Municipal Airport (3M7) to Celina, TN (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13CA400
- 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
Maxair Drifter DRIFTER II
- Aircraft type
- Maxair Drifter DRIFTER
- 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
- N42548
- Operator
- David A. Gregory · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lafayette Municipal Airport (3M7), Lafayette, TNTo Celina, TN (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the amateur-built, amphibious, light-sport airplane reported that the airplane accelerated and lifted off from the asphalt runway without incident; however, during the initial climb it encountered "severe turbulence." The pilot was not able to control the airplane and was attempting to return to the airport when it landed hard in a soy bean field, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation; nor did the pilot report any. The pilot reported that wind at the time of the accident was light and variable, with gusts up to 8 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the initial climb after takeoff in gusty wind conditions, which resulted in a hard off-airport landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13CA400
- Event ID
- 20130906X04335
- Case number
- ERA13CA400
- 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: 4010067edaaa51520f3b50bbfabe6ebc8124781d1f3a8e5de5af5a7d0d26bd1d; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:46:28.217Z.