IAD96LA045 · Advanced Technology ULTRA SPORT 254 ULTRA SPOR
Advanced Technology ULTRA SPORT 254 ULTRA SPOR · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD96LA045
- 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
Advanced Technology ULTRA SPORT 254 ULTRA SPOR
- Aircraft type
- Advanced Technology ULTRA SPORT 254
- 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
- N254AS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to a witness, the helicopter was hovering backward at a pace he described as '...a brisk walk...[then it stopped its rearward flight and] pitched the nose down to transition to forward flight.' The aircraft continued to pitch over into a progressively steeper nose down attitude, and descended into the terrain. The pilot stated that he '...initially applied forward cyclic and positive collective in order to fly through translational lift and enter stable forward flight...I realized I had no control in the forward longitudinal axis...impacted the ground approximately two seconds after the uncommanded pitch acceleration. Postaccident examination of the helicopter and videotaped evidence of the accident did not revealed a preimpact malfunction or anomaly. The pilot reported that he had 3,554 hours total flight time, including 2,032 hours in rotorcraft/helicopter. The pilot indicated that he had 2.2 hours in the accident make and model aircraft.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during low altitude flight/maneuvering, which resulted in the helicopter impacting terrain. A related factor was the pilot's lack of flight experience in the make and model of helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD96LA045
- Event ID
- 20001208X05268
- Case number
- IAD96LA045
- 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: f71266e73146b5f209a8a02e0f1ea2cbd680ce2b360ab09b18125820907f6373; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:53:37.806Z.