FTW98LA263 · Moore B-8MJ
Moore B-8MJ · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From F61 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA263
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Moore B-8MJ
- Aircraft type
- Moore B-8
- Category
- Gyroplane
- 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
- N4874X
- Operator
- Lloyd A. Milligan · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From F61To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses observed the pilot flying the gyroplane around the airport at a 'low altitude' for about 30-35 minutes, and then land. The pilot made adjustments to the rotor head trim and then took off again. The witnesses reported that the pilot 'did a lot of very low flying between hangars, [and] never got over 15-20 feet high.' A witness reported that the pilot made another low pass over them close to the north end of a hangar. The pilot then flew down the NW runway and to the west out of their view. When the aircraft returned from the west, it was about 10 to 12 feet agl. As the aircraft came around the hangar, a rotor blade struck the hangar door support, separating the rotor blade from the aircraft. The gyroplane came to rest inverted. The pilot was wearing a helmet; however, the strap did not have a buckle.
Probable cause
The non-certificated pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the hangar. A factor was the pilot's maneuvering at a low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA263
- Event ID
- 20001211X10309
- Case number
- FTW98LA263
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-06-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ff91e74acb412edad3bc946c89fcc46a9ac7874353c57f438a01bc4f4ab1472e; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:32:47.111Z.