Gyrocopter Crashes Into Florida Mobile Home, Killing Two

Two people were killed after their gyrocopter crashed into a mobile home in Florida, injuring one person on the ground.

The house in Sebring, Highlands County, was burned to the ground on Oct. 30 after the gyrocopter—a helicopter-plane hybrid—got into trouble, reported the local sheriff’s office.

According to witnesses in local reports, the aircraft clipped power lines and a pole before plunging into the mobile home and bursting into flames. There was nobody in the house at the time.

One of those killed in the crash was a local gyrocopter instructor.

Neighbor Randall Myers told WFLA he thought the aircraft was going to hit his house.

A Big Explosion

“I was sitting at my computer and I saw the shadow and I heard him rev the engine up. And as soon as he reved it up, it started popping.  And the next thing I know, there was a big explosion and the lights went out,” said Myers.

Another neighbor, Diane Clark, told WFLA she ran out of the house following a big explosion to find a live electricity wire on their patio.

According to ABC, the gyrocopter reportedly snapped the power cable in half, and pulled down several electrical lines.

The occupants died on impact, according to local reports.

The Federal Aviation Authority confirmed that a plane had caught fire after crashing into the Sebring Falls Mobile Home Park in Sebring at 3:15 pm.

The two occupants of the gyrocopter (sometimes called a gyroplane) were named in local reports as chiropractor Chris Brugger and pilot Chris Lord.

Lord was a pilot, instructor, examiner, test pilot at the local airport with the company Gryoplane Guy.

‘They Are Not Helicopters’

According to the company’s website, Lord “has flown many aircraft to include fixed wing, helicopter, powered parachute, weight shift trike, and thousands of hours in over 34 models of gyroplanes. Chris has trained and examined hundreds of students and has touched nearly every state traveling across the USA.”

Gyrocopters first appeared in 1923.

A gyrocopter flies by Woodland Airpark in Angeles City, in the Philippines, on Sept. 6, 2010. Ted Alijbe/AFP/Getty Images

Like helicopters they use rotating blades to provide lift, but with one big difference—the spinning blades are free-rotating, not powered by an engine. The spin is created by the forward movement of the aircraft, which is provided by a rear-mounted propeller.

“They’re not helicopters,” writes in Marc Lee in Plane and Pilot magazine. “Gyroplanes share much more with fixed-wing aircraft than they do with helicopters.”

According to Lee gyroplanes are a safe low-cost alternative to small helicopters and planes.

“A gyroplane can fly slower than an airplane and won’t stall. A gyroplane can almost hover because it needs very little forward speed to stay in the air (about 5 to 10 knots). That means that an engine failure in a gyroplane is a nonevent. The craft will float down in autorotation like a parachute. A gyroplane flies in permanent autorotation. That virtue makes gyroplanes extraordinarily safe,” he said.