SEA01LA008 · Wildman ADVENTURER
Wildman ADVENTURER · Accident: airframe, component or system failure
From Flying B Airport (8WA0) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA008
- 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
Wildman ADVENTURER
- Aircraft type
- Wildman ADVENTURER
- 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
- N567AW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying B Airport (8WA0)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
- Unknown
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Rotor system, main rotor blade › Blade strike
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness observed the gyroplane flying over his residence approximately 300 feet above ground. The witness reported that he waved to the pilot and 'the pilot waved back' and further reported that '...seconds later he [the witness] observed the rear of the gyroplane swaying back and forth and parts falling off the rear portion of the aircraft....' The gyroplane descended steeply to the ground and a post crash fire consumed much of the wreckage. Onsite examination by an FAA inspector determined that the wreckage was confined to a relatively small area with the exception of a diagonal section from the upper portion of the rudder, and one of the propeller's composite blades. These two items were located approximately 150 to 200 feet from the ground impact site. There was evidence of main rotor blade impact on both the separated propeller blade and rudder section. The inspector reported no control discontinuity at the accident site. The gyroplane did not have a horizontal stabilizer.
Probable cause
A main rotor blade strike (impact) with both a pusher propeller blade and the rudder during an unknown phase of operation resulting in a loss of control and uncontrolled descent to terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA008
- Event ID
- 20001212X22255
- Case number
- SEA01LA008
- 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: 0320fd16f86354b5b6c4bb343e2f5b5d9bb37803d8f4696428b7528b467dc53b; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:48:38.764Z.