GAA18CA273 · Christopher Lord ELA ECLIPSE 10
Christopher Lord ELA ECLIPSE 10 · Accident en route
From Tom B. David Field (CZL) to Tom B. David Field (CZL)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA273
- 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
Christopher Lord ELA ECLIPSE 10
- Aircraft type
- Christopher Lord ELA ECLIPSE 10
- 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
- N533EA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tom B. David Field (CZL), Calhoun, GATo Tom B. David Field (CZL), Calhoun, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2017)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 solo student gyroplane pilot reported that he "was flying behind the power curve," and the gyroplane lost altitude. He added that he couldn't tell if there were power lines ahead and decided to conduct a "hard vertical de[s]cent landing." The terrain was uneven, and the gyroplane rolled onto its side during landing. The student added that, before he decided to land, he got distracted for a few seconds and descended below a safe altitude.
The gyroplane sustained substantial damage to the rotor, fuselage, and empennage.
The student reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the gyroplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain sufficient airspeed, which resulted in a loss of altitude and necessitated a sudden descent to unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA273
- Event ID
- 20180504X04949
- Case number
- GAA18CA273
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-05-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d6976239ea6ec5dde922cec612a8f6c647ea5ad6bbf6dc21e064bbee8bf93e21; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:00:46.517Z.