FTW97LA001 · Continental Copters EL TOMCAT MK-5A EL TOMCAT
Continental Copters EL TOMCAT MK-5A EL TOMCAT · Accident: roll over during takeoff
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA001
- 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
Continental Copters EL TOMCAT MK-5A EL TOMCAT
- Aircraft type
- Continental Copters EL TOMCAT MK-5A
- 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
- N7MH
- Operator
- Unknown
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Ground personnel › Tie down, not removed
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Lafayette, LA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he and his groundcrew were preparing to commence an aerial application job for a farmer who was reportedly 'anxious' to get the job underway. The helicopter was transported to the job site on a trailer from which it was normally operated. After a preflight, the pilot prepared to take off from the trailer. Upon lift-off, the rear portion of the left skid became 'snagged' on the left rear tiedown. According to a witness and the pilot, the aircraft 'pitched up, rolled left', and at 'least one of the main rotor blades struck the ground.' Subsequently, the skid broke loose from the tie down, and the nose pitched down and impacted the ground. During this sequence, the tail boom separated from the helicopter. The pilot reported that he and his groundcrew were fatigued when they arrived on the job. During a 168 day time period, he had flown over 400 hours, and had spent approximately 656 hours driving to jobs. He reported his normal work day to be 0500 to 2300 (allowing 6 hours for sleep). The pilot stated that he needed 8 hours of sleep on average to feel fully rested.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to ensure a proper preflight and the groundcrew's failure to remove the tiedown. Factors were pilot and groundcrew fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA001
- Event ID
- 20001208X06869
- Case number
- FTW97LA001
- 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: 8c6492281a79a7b17fe5e54bc02f9a54b0249dbee4fb58028d63871b33faf501; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:26:17.735Z.