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NYC99LA072 · Miner ROTORWAY EXEC 162F ROTORWAY E

14 Mar 1999 · Mechanicsburg, PA, United States

Miner ROTORWAY EXEC 162F ROTORWAY E · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering

From No airport to an unrecorded destination

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Event

NTSB case
NYC99LA072
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
Visual Meteorological Cond

Miner ROTORWAY EXEC 162F ROTORWAY E

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
N124CF
Operator
William A. Newhart · private individual
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From No airportTo 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 · hover in ground effect
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 › Dynamic rollover, inadvertent

Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

This was the pilot's first solo flight in a helicopter. He brought the helicopter to about a 6 inch hover and then drifted left and settled. The left rear skid contacted the ground and the helicopter rolled over on its left side. The pilot held a private pilot certificate for single engine airplanes but had not flown in several years. He had received 9.9 hours of dual instruction in the same model of helicopter, and was signed off for solo flight, but had not flown in the 44 days that preceded the accident flight.

Probable cause

The pilot's inadvertent induced dynamic rollover. A factor in the accident was the pilot's lack of helicopter experience.

Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record NYC99LA072
Event ID
20001205X00381
Case number
NYC99LA072
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: investigation status. 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: 255e4eb3d0827da50572475e92efd74d57c5a2a15255864bd8dafac1ed6a36a2; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:35:27.819Z.