CEN23LA132 · Maule M-7-235B
Wild Country Aircraft Maule M-7-235B · Accident: nose over/nose down during landing
From Edenway Airport (2CO5) to Hotchkiss, CO (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA132
- 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 M-7-235B
- Aircraft type
- Maule M-7
- 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
- N235TT
- Operator
- Wild Country Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Edenway Airport (2CO5), Austin, COTo Hotchkiss, CO (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1996)
- 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
- Nose over/nose down
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot planned to land at a Bureau of Land Management backcountry landing strip he had previously visited over 100 times. After completing multiple low passes to assess the snow depth and overall conditions of the landing area, he executed a soft field landing in a 3-point, full stall attitude. During the rollout, the drag from the snow was greater than expected and he was unable to maintain control. The airplane nosed over at low speed and came to rest inverted. The vertical stabilizer, rudder, and right-wing 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.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control during landing rollout on a snow-covered, turf airstrip.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA132
- Event ID
- 20230313106884
- Case number
- CEN23LA132
- 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, 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: e4a3b1fe760e92b04c2572114c9d05731dac00b15d453ca0784d31176ba7fa54; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:25:15.257Z.