ERA18LA027 · Homer AUTOGYRO CAVALON
AIC Recycling Homer AUTOGYRO CAVALON · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
From Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT) to Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA027
- 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
- 0
- 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
Homer AUTOGYRO CAVALON
- Aircraft type
- Homer AUTOGYRO CAVALON
- 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
- N470CH
- Operator
- AIC Recycling
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT), Oak Island, NCTo Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT), Oak Island, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and flight instructor were conducting a flight review in the pilot’s experimental gyroplane. Both reported that the engine start, run up, and takeoff were normal. About 100 ft above ground level, they increased throttle to full power, which engaged the turbocharger. Immediately after, there was a rapid loss of engine power from 5,000 rpm to 3,000 rpm, and they were unable to maintain flight. The flight instructor took control of the aircraft and made a 180° turn back toward the runway but was unable to reach the runway at the completion of the turn. The aircraft landed hard in the grass, resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot reported that the aircraft was damaged beyond repair and disposed of; therefore, no additional examination of the engine was conducted, and the reason for the loss of power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA027
- Event ID
- 20171120X44552
- Case number
- ERA18LA027
- 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, cause areas. 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: 4e06b5ded828617e0d974e08d517fd7ea49354da6277726ad7368198a007d734; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:01:08.305Z.