CHI96LA046 · Robert Eckley ROTORWAY
Robert Eckley ROTORWAY · Accident: roll over while standing
From Salina Municipal Airport (SLN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96LA046
- 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
Robert Eckley ROTORWAY
- Aircraft type
- Robert Eckley ROTORWAY
- 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
- N50235
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salina Municipal Airport (SLN)To 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
- Standing · idling rotors
- 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
- Roll over
- 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 › Maintenance, service of aircraft/equipment, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that the purpose of the flight was to check the cyclic rigging on the helicopter. This was to be the helicopter's first flight in three years since it was recently taken out of storage. After start up, the helicopter rolled over. The pilot stated that the cause of the accident was the over adjusting of the cycle control during the rigging procedure. The pilot has performed all inspections and rigging on the helicopter. Review of the pilot's logbook revealed that the pilot did not hold a valid medical, airman certificate, nor the student pilot endorsements required to operate the helicopter. The pilot also did not possess a Repairman Certificate.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper maintenance of the helicopter. Factors in the accident were the pilot's lack of proper certification for the operation of the helicopter and his lack of recent experience in type of aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96LA046
- Event ID
- 20001207X04972
- Case number
- CHI96LA046
- 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: c99896cad0a6d88dc076841d10e3b84320b8b5c401b7b9913c10ea0163e92b21; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:59:46.625Z.