CEN19FA218 · GIbb AR-1
GIbb AR-1 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Hawley Municipal Airport (04Y) to Hawley Municipal Airport (04Y)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN19FA218
- 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
GIbb AR-1
- Aircraft type
- Gibb AR-1
- 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
- N14968
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hawley Municipal Airport (04Y), Hawley, MNTo Hawley Municipal Airport (04Y), Hawley, MN
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2018)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the gyroplane departed on a local personal flight in visual meteorological conditions at an unknown time. Several witnesses saw the gyroplane descending straight down and impacting the ground near the departure airport. All major components of the aircraft were located at the accident site. No preimpact anomalies were noted with the gyroplane. The pilot had built the gyroplane from a kit about a year before the accident. As best as could be determined from his flight records, the pilot had received about 36 hours of flight instruction in the gyroplane. Autopsy and toxicology testing of the pilot revealed no evidence of physiological impairment or incapacitation, and the reason for the gyroplane's descent and impact with terrain could not be determined.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control and collision with terrain 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 CEN19FA218
- Event ID
- 20190711X60234
- Case number
- CEN19FA218
- 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. 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: 6869f9ec67d4cd8fee1d4b2a90c3d8858c6f2e535a9944d1f97017b436a0a4d6; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:01:45.619Z.