CHI98LA277 · Marchetti AVENGER GRYO PLANE AVENGER GR
Marchetti AVENGER GRYO PLANE AVENGER GR · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Mentone Airport (C92) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA277
- 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
- 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
Marchetti AVENGER GRYO PLANE AVENGER GR
- Aircraft type
- Marchetti AVENGER GRYO PLANE
- 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
- N2223A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mentone Airport (C92)To 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Lack of familiarity with aircraft
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a normal takeoff and climbed to 500 feet agl, on a 360 degree heading. When he leveled off, the gyroplane's control response 'became suddenly heavy, coinciding with an increase in rotor speed.' The pilot immediately reduced power to idle (600) rpm and attempted a precautionary landing. The aircraft pitched down and dove toward the ground. The pilot and the passenger were both pulled back on the control sticks. The gyroplane impacted into a soybean field. The day before the accident, the pilot had wide-chord (8 and 1/2 inch) rotor blades installed on the gyroplane. On a flight prior to the accident flight, the pilot noticed during rollout from a level, right, 180 degree turn, that the control stick felt very heavy. The previous owner said that the Vne of the gyroplane was 60 mph. At that airspeed, the gyroplane has a nosedown pitch of 5 to 6 degrees. The gyroplane had a 10-inch chord airboat propeller installed on it. The owner said that if the engine power is reduced below 1,200 rpm, the drag, induced by the propeller, increases on the aircraft and the nose will pitch down. The engine idles at approximately 600 to 650 rpm. 'If the aircraft was fast and the pilot reduced the power to idle, he would run out of aft stick.' Examination of the wreckage revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's lack of familiarity with the gyroplane's performance, and his improper in-flight decision to reduce engine power to idle which aggravated the gyroplane's nose down pitch and exceeded the gyroplane's back stick authority.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA277
- Event ID
- 20001211X10526
- Case number
- CHI98LA277
- 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: 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: 350816c30f2d37e81dcb982337ccddde2b01f030c4846a4f170d0ebbcbfce348; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:22:46.049Z.