CEN18LA148 · Maule M 5-235C
Maule M 5-235C · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Roxbury, KS to Mc Pherson Airport (MPR)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA148
- 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 5-235C
- 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
- N9281E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roxbury, KSTo Mc Pherson Airport (MPR), MC PHERSON, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 41 years (built 1977)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 private pilot had landed to check on a field for his cattle and was subsequently departing from a road in his tailwheel-equipped airplane. The pilot reported that, as the tailwheel lifted off, the airplane turned to the left. The pilot said that he was slow to respond with rudder input and that his rudder application was inadequate. The airplane traveled left a few feet and the left wingtip hit a highway sign as the airplane became airborne. The pilot continued the takeoff over a tower and its guy wires, but, because he was aware of the structural damage to the airplane, he performed a precautionary landing to a field, during which the airplane impacted trees. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the airplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control during takeoff from a road, which resulted in impact with a sign.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA148
- Event ID
- 20180424X72817
- Case number
- CEN18LA148
- 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: 5ce3b3359e78225c7604513abc7d704bd87ba36d0c9bdc0bb325b3e509ac2be1; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:55:50.682Z.