GAA17CA252 · Maule MX7 180A
Maule MX7 180A · Accident: loss of control on ground while standing
From North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI) to Floydada Municipal Airport (41F)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA252
- 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 MX7 180A
- Aircraft type
- Maule MX7
- 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
- N3035M
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Texas Regional Airport Perrin Field (GYI), SHERMAN/DENISON, TXTo Floydada Municipal Airport (41F), Floydada, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1993)
- 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
- Standing
- 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 on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 of the tailwheel-equipped airplane reported that he was moving the airplane across the country for a friend and had multiple refueling stops along his route. He added that, on his first attempt to land on the asphalt runway, he conducted a go-around due to the strong crosswind, and during the subsequent approach, he landed in the grass next to the asphalt runway to touch down with a gusting headwind. Once stopped in the grass with the engine running, he radioed over the common traffic advisory frequency to ask for assistance to tie down the airplane, but after 5 to 10 minutes, no one had responded. He added, "suddenly" a wind gust lifted the left wing, and the airplane corkscrewed clockwise and nosed over.
The right and left wing lift struts sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported that the wind was from 330° at 30 knots, gusting to 40 knots at the time of the accident. An automated weather observation station (AWOS), 22 nautical miles (nm) northwest from the accident site, recorded that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 320° at 29 knots, gusting to 42 knots. Another AWOS, 32 nm southwest from the accident site, recorded that, about the time of the accident, the wind was from 320° at 29 knots, gusting to 43 knots.
A review of the recorded hourly weather observations from the two AWOSs revealed that, from about 30 minutes before the pilot departed to 1 hour after the accident time, the wind remained consistent from the northwest about 30 knots, gusting to 38 to 46 knots. The pilot reported that he had on-board weather capability.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to fly into and land at an area of known widespread high gusting wind, which resulted in a nose-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA252
- Event ID
- 20170502X90416
- Case number
- GAA17CA252
- 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: 2361c35855a6bf7b3dd313be8b7b68a1e4f0107a61d9928180077a66dddef701; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:13:22.269Z.