ERA23LA267 · FLY Gyros LLC M24 ORION
FLY Gyros LLC M24 ORION · Accident: loss of control on ground during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA267
- 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
FLY Gyros LLC M24 ORION
- Aircraft type
- FLY Gyros M24
- 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
- N49PF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2021)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was attempting to take off when his gyroplane veered off the left side of the runway and impacted a fence substantially damaging the fuselage. According to a first responder, the engine and propeller were running, and the pilot, who appeared incoherent, was trying to climb out of the gyroplane. Once the engine was turned off, the pilot was removed from the aircraft and air-lifted to a trauma center. Medical personnel initially reported that the pilot had suffered a stroke just before takeoff and had been dealing with a dissecting carotid artery for several weeks before the accident. The pilot’s wife told law enforcement that she spoke with her husband before the flight. She said he seemed normal, and he told her that a previous mechanical issue had been fixed, and the gyroplane was fit to fly. Postaccident examination of the gyroplane revealed no mechanical issues that would have precluded normal operation at the time of the accident. A postaccident medical review revealed the pilot experienced an acute embolic stroke near the time of the crash, likely caused by dissection of the carotid artery. The pilot had a history of left internal carotid artery stenosis, but no prior carotid dissection. The presence of internal carotid artery stenosis would have put the pilot at increased risk of experiencing an embolic stroke in the absence of dissection. Furthermore, carotid dissection may have occurred before the accident (spontaneously or as a result of minor trauma), leading to embolic stroke, which may have been delayed. However, it is also possible that the pilot’s carotid dissection and embolic stroke may have resulted from the blunt head and neck injury that he sustained in the accident. Such blunt injury is a recognized cause of carotid dissection that can rapidly result in embolic stroke. Thus, whether the pilot’s acute stroke occurred before the accident, or as a result of injury sustained in the accident, could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain directional control on takeoff for unknown reasons; whether the pilot’s acute stroke contributed to, or resulted from, the accident could not be determined.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA267
- Event ID
- 20230612192352
- Case number
- ERA23LA267
- 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, 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: 04493c301f20cd8bd9f539080c90c02705daf5974c70f40300278598edc7880c; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:42:58.148Z.