CEN14LA056 · Pearson JON M DRAGONFLY
Pearson JON M DRAGONFLY · Accident: aircraft structural failure while maneuvering
From Chambers County Airport (T00) to Chambers County Airport (T00)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA056
- 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
Pearson JON M DRAGONFLY
- Aircraft type
- Pearson Jon DRAGONFLY
- 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
- N975DF
- Operator
- Weir Steven Wayne
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chambers County Airport (T00), Anahuac, TXTo Chambers County Airport (T00), Anahuac, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2009)
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The gyroplane was in the airport traffic pattern when witnesses saw the main rotor head separate in flight and the gyroplane subsequently impact terrain. The pilot's friends and the mechanic who performed the last conditional inspection reported that the pilot/owner performed most of the maintenance on the gyroplane and that he had recently installed the main rotor head bearing block. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the bearing block had been installed upside down and was being held in place solely by friction. The pilot was not a Federal Aviation Administration-certificated mechanic or repairman.
Probable cause
The incorrect installation by the pilot, who was not a certificated mechanic or repairman, of the main rotor head bearing block, which resulted in the in-flight separation of the rotor head.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA056
- Event ID
- 20131116X80909
- Case number
- CEN14LA056
- 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: 5b470151c782a79158b416e818f66d9ceb3f8f535b00a529f499b9095c3e434c; retrieved 2026-09-14T16:07:15.428Z.