ERA20FA029 · Pavel Tango2
Pavel Tango2 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Polk County Airport- Cornelius Moore Field (4A4) to Polk County Airport- Cornelius Moore Field (4A4)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20FA029
- 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
Pavel Tango2
- Aircraft type
- Pavel TANGO2
- 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
- N875FV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Polk County Airport- Cornelius Moore Field (4A4), Cedartown, GATo Polk County Airport- Cornelius Moore Field (4A4), Cedartown, GA
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2019)
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a test flight to mitigate a vibration in the gyroplane. When the pilot did not return within the expected timeframe a friend alerted authorities and went to look for him. The wreckage was located about 2.5 miles from the departure airport in a cotton field where it came to rest inverted about 15 ft beyond the initial impact point. Examination of the wreckage revealed that there were no anomalies with the gyroplane that would have precluded normal operation prior to the accident. Toxicology testing identified sertraline and its metabolite desmethylsertraline, atorvastatin, and metoprolol in blood and urine. The pilot’s medications were unlikely to have resulted in impairment and therefore most likely did not contribute to the accident The pilot’s autopsy revealed severe coronary artery disease with a previous stent and severe ongoing stenosis in the left anterior descending coronary artery. While there was no obvious scar, no microscopic evaluation of the heart muscle was performed, so whether there was evidence of previous or ongoing ischemia could not be determined. However, the severity of his coronary artery disease placed him at increased risk of an acute cardiac event that could have resulted in sudden chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, or fainting, any of which could have been acutely impairing or incapacitating. But in this case, there is no available operational information; therefore, whether effects from the pilot’s coronary artery disease contributed to this accident could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control of the gyroplane for reasons that could not be determined based on available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20FA029
- Event ID
- 20191104X50805
- Case number
- ERA20FA029
- 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: 15f9fb96aeb745eeaa86decc197c30b472f14d160b9402d42964cd5358bee50a; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:08:03.399Z.