SEA00LA169 · Clearwaters RAF 2000
Clearwaters RAF 2000 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Chelan, WA to Sunshine Acres Airport (WA21)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA169
- 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
Clearwaters RAF 2000
- Aircraft type
- Clearwaters RAF-2000
- 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
- N61376
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chelan, WATo Sunshine Acres Airport (WA21), Grand Coulee, WA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The homebuilt gyroplane pilot reported that while in cruise, approximately 500-1,000 feet above ground, he lost directional control of the aircraft. He reported that his only method of control was to cross-control with full left cyclic which brought the gyroplane to a flat attitude in a spiral turn to the right. Unable to stop the spiral, he reduced throttle and initiated a spiraling descent to ground impact. A post-crash fire destroyed the gyroplane. Examination of the wreckage revealed no apparent discontinuity in the gyroplane's rudder controls. A horizontal stabilizer had been added to the aircraft which, according to the owner/builder, benefited the in flight stability of the gyroplane.
Probable cause
A loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA169
- Event ID
- 20001212X21873
- Case number
- SEA00LA169
- 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: 6f69af45292ea0481b2ff15c3d5d3e9270331a3a3a1dbae95abfdfe3476296d7; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:29:07.814Z.