LAX99TA115 · McDonnell Douglas 600N
McDonnell Douglas 600N · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From L67 · Rialto, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99TA115
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
McDonnell Douglas 600N
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 600
- Category
- Helicopter
- 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
- N626SB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From L67 · Rialto, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a routine law enforcement patrol flight, the pilot responded to the 4,700-foot mean sea level mountainside to investigate circumstances related to an apparent abandoned vehicle. Upon arriving at the site, the pilot performed a toe-in landing to discharge his crewmember. The crewmember proceeded to evaluate the vehicle while the pilot orbited the area. While orbiting, the pilot observed that low elevation clouds were approaching. However, the visibility initially was about 10 miles, and the cloud height appeared between 500 and 600 feet above the ground. After a few minutes, the crewmember returned to the helicopter, and they departed. Seconds after taking off the pilot lost visual reference with the ground. The pilot further indicated that he continued flying by reference to his flight instruments and the helicopter began spinning. Between 1 and 1.5 minutes later the spinning stopped, and the helicopter lost altitude until impacting the mountainside.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight decision to maneuver in the area while observed inclement weather approached, which led to a loss of control. Contributing factors were the low ceilings, mountainous terrain and spatial disorientation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99TA115
- Event ID
- 20001205X00356
- Case number
- LAX99TA115
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-03-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fe84f78671784dad9ba275e18b9b9fa5f3e8fa2e943899cbd136b8f1f66a9302; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:35:34.065Z.