WPR25LA115 · Rotorsport UK Ltd CAVALON
Rotorsport UK Ltd CAVALON · Accident: aerodynamic stall/spin on approach
From Chino Airport (KCNO) to French Valley Airport (F70)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA115
- 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
Rotorsport UK Ltd CAVALON
- Aircraft type
- Rotorsport Uk 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
- N157P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (KCNO), Chino, CATo French Valley Airport (F70), Murrieta, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2023)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Aerodynamic stall/spin
- 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 › Action/decision
- 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 student pilot reported that she was on a solo cross-country flight and had entered the airport traffic pattern. While on the base leg, she slowed the gyroplane to follow an airplane that was established on final approach. She then turned final after the airplane had landed, however, the airplane did not exit the runway as she had anticipated. She slowed the gyroplane further and allowed a “slow vertical descent” for additional spacing from the airplane. The pilot then noticed that she had allowed the airspeed and altitude to decay. She attempted to recover by applying full throttle, however, the gyroplane turned right into a grass area and impacted terrain about 250 ft from the approach end of the runway. The rotor blades, fuselage, keel, and rudder were substantially damaged. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed during an approach and subsequent descent into terrain. Contributing to the accident was the student pilot’s failure to perform a go-around maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA115
- Event ID
- 20250324199898
- Case number
- WPR25LA115
- 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: 89aa82ab1c68b4978218470ba4454faec348ae5015ab334672f6576e557f09bd; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:45:21.119Z.