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MIA00LA068 · Dana A. Moore DANAMITE

16 Jan 2000 · Smyrna, TN, United States

Dana A. Moore DANAMITE · Accident: on ground/water collision with object while taxiing

From Smyrna Airport (MQY) to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
MIA00LA068
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
Instrument Meteorological Cond

Dana A. Moore DANAMITE

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
N6407C
Operator
Unknown
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Smyrna Airport (MQY)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
Taxi · from runway
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
On ground/water 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
Destroyed

Cause areas

  • Pilot in command › Clearance, inadequate
  • Pilot in command › Taxispeed, excessive

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

The pilot stated that after completing the first flight in his recently constructed gyroplane that he was taxiing expeditiously back to the hangar and did not take into account the wet taxiway, or the tail wind. The pilot said that while taxiing the gyroplane the nose wheel did not turn as he would have liked, and the aircraft drifted close to a fence and the rotor made contact with the fence, destroying the aircraft. The FAA inspector who conducted a postcrash examination of the gyroplane, confirmed that the aircraft was destroyed as a result of the accident.

Probable cause

the pilot's excessive taxiing speed and failure to maintain adequate clearance from objects, resulting in the gyroplane's main rotor colliding with a fence and subsequent damage to the aircraft.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record MIA00LA068
Event ID
20001212X20410
Case number
MIA00LA068
Dataset
historical-pre2008
Source SHA-256
89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
  • 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: 78e21dc7dca2f0411e641f787dcaa5e8f77f1a391868525666ccb5bc8775e82f; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:22:58.220Z.
  • Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states the rotor contacted the fence, "destroying the aircraft", and the FAA inspector "confirmed that the aircraft was destroyed as a result of the accident".