WPR20LA155 · CSP Leasing LLC Cavalon
CSP Leasing LLC Cavalon · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Myrtle Creek Municipal Airport (16S) to Sanderson Field (SHN)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA155
- 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
CSP Leasing LLC Cavalon
- Aircraft type
- CSP Leasing 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
- N477AG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Myrtle Creek Municipal Airport (16S), Myrtle Creek, ORTo Sanderson Field (SHN), Shelton, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2015)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed an airport on a cross country flight and had flown about 7 miles before witnesses observed the aircraft flying between 1,000 ft to 2,000 ft above ground level (agl), at which time they also heard the engine make an unusual noise as if something had come off the aircraft. They subsequently observed the gyrocopter enter an uncontrolled descent and impact terrain. One of the witnesses observed parts coming off the gyrocopter, which he believed was either the engine or the transmission coming apart. He also observed the “tail boom” break off, swing forward, and crash into the passenger side of the cockpit, which sent it into an uncontrollable spin and subsequent impact with terrain at about a 45° nose-down attitude.
A postaccident examination of the gyrocopter revealed that the keel tube had signature strike marks consistent with a main rotor blade impact. This physical evidence was indicative of a substantially unweighted rotor system. This would have occurred while the aircraft was nosed over for a long period of time, at which time the rotor likely lost its directional orientation and spun out of axis and struck the keel tube. However, the duration of any nose over made by the gyrocopter during the accident flight could not be determined due to a lack of available evidence. The parts that departed the gyrocopter inflight were not identified during the investigation.
Probable cause
A substantially unweighted rotor system for reasons that could not be determined, which resulted in contact between the main rotor blade and the gyrocopter’s keel tube and a loss of control and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA155
- Event ID
- 20200528X01752
- Case number
- WPR20LA155
- 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: e18841fc4119594052ad0736154f34442c6b5de3c694f02cf93926a9be080cfa; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:15:01.710Z.