IAD05LA085 · Martel Air Command 532Elite
Martel Air Command 532Elite · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Franklin County State Airport (FSO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA085
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Martel Air Command 532Elite
- Aircraft type
- Martel AIR COMMAND 532ELITE
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Franklin County State Airport (FSO), Highgate, VTTo 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft handling, improper
- Pilot in command › Inadequate training
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot purchased the used gyroplane about 2 weeks prior to the accident. After assembling it, and 2 days before the accident, he conducted a series of touch and go landings, or "crow hops" along a runway. The day before the accident flight was his first flight. During the accident flight, a main rotor blade "folded," and the gyroplane descended nose first into wooded terrain. Examination of the wreckage revealed airframe and rotor blade marks, consistent with retreating rotor blade stall, which could have resulted from either pilot input or "a sharp downdraft." Winds, about the time of the accident, at an airport 25 nautical miles to the south, were 7 knots, with no wind gusts reported. The make and model of gyroplane was known to be unstable, and the pilot was at least aware of a recommended upgrade kit to enhance stability, but had not installed it. The pilot was not rated in gyroplanes, and had spoken to a flight instructor about training, but then decided to self-train. The pilot also did not possess a repairman's certificate for the gyroplane.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper cyclic input, which resulted in a retreating rotor blade stall, and its subsequent impact with the propeller. Also causal, was the pilot's failure to acquire proper training. A factor was the pilot's decision not to have a stability upgrade kit installed prior to flying the gyroplane.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA085
- Event ID
- 20050811X01211
- Case number
- IAD05LA085
- 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, coordinates. 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: c7abf6228783f94ac1148827f935ac737cd103159d75afe1f69d603f9393294c; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:00:08.164Z.