CHI08LA052 · Levick RAF-2000-GTX-SE
Levick RAF-2000-GTX-SE · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Salem Municipal Airport (I83) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08LA052
- 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
Levick RAF-2000-GTX-SE
- Aircraft type
- Levick 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
- N24DN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salem Municipal Airport (I83), Salem, INTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- 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
A witness reported that after takeoff, when approximately 20 feet above ground level (agl), the gyroplane drifted to the right and the tail turned "abruptly" to the right about 90-degrees. The pilot reduced power and regained control. The gyroplane returned to the runway centerline and the pilot appeared to be setting up for a landing. However, when the gyroplane was about 5 feet above the runway, the pilot increased engine power and started to climb. About 75 to 100 feet agl, the tail of the gyroplane again turned "abruptly" to the right, the nose pitched up "steeply," and the aircraft rolled inverted. It subsequently impacted the ground on the rotor mast. A post accident examination did not reveal any anomalies consistent with a pre-impact failure or malfunction. The pilot did not have any recollection of the accident flight. He reported that he had owned the accident gyroplane for 2-1/2 years, but he was still just learning. He soloed the previous summer and had accumulated about 5 hours of solo flight time. He had about 20 hours total flight time in gyroplanes. The pilot held a private pilot certificate with a single-engine land airplane rating, with about 280 hours flight time in airplanes.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the gyroplane during climbout after takeoff.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08LA052
- Event ID
- 20080122X00083
- Case number
- CHI08LA052
- 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: f0e7e2aeebedab67690fe3ea1483c21bf2d324900fc5aa4efc6412f1f9e3836d; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:41:11.046Z.