CEN10LA442 · Lunceford Sparrowhawk II
Lunceford Sparrowhawk II · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Perry County Municipal Airport (KTEL) to Perry County Municipal Airport (KTEL)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10LA442
- 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
Lunceford Sparrowhawk II
- Aircraft type
- Lunceford SPARROWHAWK
- 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
- N91814
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perry County Municipal Airport (KTEL), Tell City, INTo Perry County Municipal Airport (KTEL), Tell City, IN
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental amateur-built gyroplane was maneuvering in the traffic pattern when it descended into a heavily wooded area adjacent to the airport. There were no eyewitnesses to the final moments of the flight; however, several individuals reported hearing a sudden decrease in engine noise immediately before ground impact. There was limited damage to the dense overhead foliage at the accident site, consistent with a near-vertical descent path. The entire gyroplane was extensively damaged during a postaccident ground fire, which precluded the determination of any potential preimpact engine or flight control system malfunctions. Although the leading edge of the main rotor blades did not exhibit any appreciable impact damage, the damage to the engine propeller blades and nearby tree branches was consistent with engine rotation as the gyroplane descended vertically through the trees. The gyroplane's near-vertical descent through the trees and the minimal damage to the main rotor system was consistent with an aerodynamic stall.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control of the gyroplane for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10LA442
- Event ID
- 20100727X22656
- Case number
- CEN10LA442
- 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, 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: 3254bfc7e67519d40b90eb2a73f84009fce4f7b4efaf02d6a26e87fe57039a36; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:58:01.037Z.