GAA18CA073 · Brock Steiner Sport Copter Vortex
Brock Steiner Sport Copter Vortex · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Manti-Ephraim Airport (41U) to J. Randy McKnight Nephi Municipal Airport (U14)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA073
- 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
Brock Steiner Sport Copter Vortex
- Aircraft type
- Brock Steiner SPORT COPTER VORTEX
- 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
- N395SC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manti-Ephraim Airport (41U), Manti, UTTo J. Randy McKnight Nephi Municipal Airport (U14), Nephi, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot of the experimental amateur-built gyroplane, during a solo cross-country flight, he became lost and decided to follow a nearby highway. Unfamiliar with the area, he exhausted the gyroplane's fuel supply and landed on a highway. The gyroplane's nosewheel struck a passing car, but the gyroplane was able to touch down and stop on the right shoulder of the highway. A passing semi-truck struck the rotor blades of the gyroplane.
The gyroplane sustained substantial damage to the rotor system.
The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the gyroplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain situational and geographic awareness during the flight, which resulted in him becoming lost and exhausting the gyroplane’s fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA073
- Event ID
- 20171208X31322
- Case number
- GAA18CA073
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-12-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a73b7dd88eda28630ccb0388366529efd9c92196f2badb9002551c3104ef741c; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:06:18.471Z.