WPR09CA232 · Atkins John RAF 2000 G
Atkins John RAF 2000 G · Accident: abrupt maneuver during initial climb
From Cawleys South Prairie Airport (02WA) to Auburn Municipal Airport (S50)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA232
- 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
Atkins John RAF 2000 G
- Aircraft type
- Atkins John 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
- N1435X
- Operator
- Rogers Randall H
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cawleys South Prairie Airport (02WA), South Prairie, WATo Auburn Municipal Airport (S50), Auburn, WA
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that during takeoff initial climb from the uncontrolled airport, at 50 feet above ground level, he heard the sound of an airplane coming towards him from the left and saw a shadow of the airplane on the ground merging with his, and initiated an abrupt turn of 90 degrees to the right to avoid a collision. Upon completion of the turn, the pilot noticed that he had lost a significant amount of airspeed and was heading toward a residential structure. The pilot initiated a second turn to the right to miss the house and attempted to regain airspeed. Subsequently, the gyroplane impacted terrain adjacent to the runway. The pilot reported no mechanical anomalies with the flight control system or engine prior to the accident. A witness located adjacent to the accident site reported that another aircraft was apparently making a high-speed pass over the runway and overflew the gyroplane as it was taking off.
Probable cause
The pilot's abrupt maneuver to avoid a collision that resulted in an airspeed reduction and subsequent loss of lift provided by the rotor system. Contributing to the accident was the failure of both pilots to maintain an adequate visual lookout for other aircraft in the traffic pattern.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA232
- Event ID
- 20090509X75329
- Case number
- WPR09CA232
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 9c39570a9d80d286482e3f8ee079b8c6895ab8da13c7c5734f56b628ae60d9b6; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:01:54.774Z.