LAX07LA142 · McDonald J4B-2
McDonald J4B-2 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Yuba County Airport (MYV) to Yuba County Airport (MYV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA142
- 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
McDonald J4B-2
- Aircraft type
- Mcdonald J4
- 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
- N445SM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuba County Airport (MYV), Marysville, CATo Yuba County Airport (MYV)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, witnesses in several different locations reported hearing a loud "pop" emanate from the gyrocopter and then it spiraled to the ground in a nose down attitude. One witness reported that the gyrocopter's nose was pushed up after it was struck by a gust of wind. He watched as the pilot corrected the pitch attitude by pushing the nose down. He then saw the gyrocopter tilting back and forth. A friend of the pilot, who is also the gyrocopter kit manufacturer, reported that he and the pilot had performed a pitch change adjustment to the main rotor system that was about 1/4 inch out of track. After the adjustment was made, the friend test flew the gyrocopter with no problems encountered. The gyrocopter was constructed of a tandem seat configuration fuselage with tricycle landing gear, a two-bladed teetering main rotor system, a rear mounted engine with a three-bladed propeller assembly, followed by a rudder, and vertical and horizontal stabilizers. An inspection of the gyrocopter by a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector and the gyrocopter kit manufacturer revealed that only about 5 percent of the wooden three-bladed propeller remained affixed to the propeller hub. Reconstruction of the recovered propeller material found that one of the propeller blades had a deep concave deformity at the leading edge approximately 10 inches from the root. No evidence of propeller blade or main rotor blade to airframe contact was found, and the investigation could not explain the origin of the propeller blade defect nor its relationship to the accident's causation, if any. Toxicological tests revealed the presence in the blood of zolpidem (a prescription sleep aid) at a level consistent with very recent use, and very high blood levels of hydrocodone (a prescription narcotic painkiller), and diphenhydramine (an over-the-counter antihistamine). All three medications would have been expected to result in impairment of judgment and psychomotor skills. The pilot's ability to operate the gyrocopter with the levels of substances found suggests a substantial tolerance to their sedative effects, implying a long-term use of high doses. The pilot had not held a current FAA medical certificate in over 25 years.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control for undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was the impairment of the pilot by the drug substances identified in the toxicological testing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA142
- Event ID
- 20070508X00527
- Case number
- LAX07LA142
- 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: d295fd6b3ae5834fb2e27c6caf3be4e44783686f613bdc4617ce7a473c3ccf05; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:41:40.886Z.