WPR23LA085 · Auto-Gyro Cavalon
Auto-Gyro Cavalon · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
From Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95) to Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA085
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Auto-Gyro Cavalon
- Aircraft type
- Auto Gyro 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
- N518DT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95), Benson, AZTo Benson Municipal Airport/Paul Kerchum Field (E95), Benson, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 6 years (built 2016)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 on ground
- 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 pilot of the gyroplane reported that, typically after reaching a speed of about 45-50 mph during the takeoff roll and just before takeoff, the nosewheel becomes light. He stated that for the accident flight the nose became light as expected, but then suddenly dropped, and the nose gear contacted the runway hard. The gyroplane veered left, and he depressed full right rudder. The main rotor impacted the runway, and the gyroplane departed the runway and came to rest on its side, sustaining substantial damage to the fuselage, tail boom, and rotor system.
A postaccident examination of the flight controls revealed no anomalies. Further examination revealed the nose gear appeared to be bent aft and right and exhibited damage consistent with a hard impact. The runway surface exhibited witness marks consistent with a hard impact of the nose gear.
Probable cause
A loss of directional control on takeoff, which resulted in the collapse of the nose wheel strut and a runway excursion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA085
- Event ID
- 20230109106555
- Case number
- WPR23LA085
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b1dbbd02be47bb4d00610a1a5ab0c0bb8a689f89f96c8f7b9638a20780892257; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:14:14.041Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. The narrative says "the pilot of the gyroplane" (Auto-Gyro Cavalon); the NTSB MDB codes it HELI (Helicopter).