CEN21LA183 · Maule MT7 235
Maule MT7 235 · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Graham Municipal Airport (RPH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA183
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 MT7 235
- Aircraft type
- Maule MT7
- 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
- N811SG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Graham Municipal Airport (RPH), Graham, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 13 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made an intentional off-airport landing in an open grass field and shortly after touchdown the airplane struck a berm hidden by grass that caused the airplane to become airborne. The airplane then ballooned about 5-10 ft above the field before it landed hard on the nose landing gear. At that point the nose landing gear collapsed, and the airplane nosed over. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, both sets of wing struts, vertical stabilizer, elevator, and rudder. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane after it struck a hidden berm during the intentional off-airport landing, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA183
- Event ID
- 20210406102878
- Case number
- CEN21LA183
- 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, cause areas. 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: c8a6cb301ba2635df02ff0dcc45fa849dda26a89f93d70c93f64020a6d2cb752; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:55:45.846Z.