The owner of the float-equipped Maule saw it crash. He was there to watch as his friend and a passenger arrived in the airplane. “I witnessed the airplane fly over the field,” he wrote, “and enter a downwind for a landing on Runway 4. As the plane turned from base to final, it banked at a very steep angle (est 75 degrees) and then continued to bank even steeper then went vertical from 50-60 feet altitude and within a second impacted, exploded and burned.”
The 42-year-old, 1,300-hour commercial pilot and his longtime girlfriend both perished in the accident, which the National Transportation Safety Board attributed to “the pilot’s inadequate airspeed and excessive bank angle while maneuvering for landing, which resulted in an aerodynamic stall.”
