DEN08CA001 · Degelia Rotor Flight Dynamic
Degelia Rotor Flight Dynamic · Accident: in flight encounter with weather during landing
From Ashland Regional Airport (KDWU) to Ashland Regional Airport (KDWU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08CA001
- 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
- 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
Degelia Rotor Flight Dynamic
- Aircraft type
- Degelia ROTOR FLIGHT DYNAMIC
- 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
- N444PD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ashland Regional Airport (KDWU), Ashland, KYTo Ashland Regional Airport (KDWU), Ashland, KY
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot he was conducting touch and go landings. During the landing flare the nose of the gyroplane drifted to the right. The pilot reported that he was not able to compensate for the winds. The gyroplane impacted the runway with the left landing gear followed by the right landing gear. The gyroplane bounced and impacted the runway again, coming to rest on its side, resulting in minor damage. The pilot sustained serious injuries. The pilot reported winds 90 degrees to the runway at 10 to 15 miles per hour. An examination of the gyroplane's structure and systems revealed minor damage and no anomalies.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during the landing flare resulting in a hard landing. Contributing factors were the crosswind and the pilot's failure to recover from a bounced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08CA001
- Event ID
- 20071102X01704
- Case number
- DEN08CA001
- 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: 9bdfd430f6925a0566eb8fb6adb49b1377b39dabf51981a1e22c1f1f52df6ad0; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:43:26.752Z.