LAX97FA091 · McDonnell Douglas MD600N
McDonnell Douglas MD600N · Accident: hard landing
From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97FA091
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD600N
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD600
- 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
- N9202L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG)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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Manufacturer › Inadequate substantiation process, insuff review
- Manufacturer › Information, not complied with
- Manufacturer › Safety advisory, not issued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a certification test flight, the pilot was following test card procedures to establish parameters for a height-velocity diagram. He began an autorotation, using a 1-second delay (to simulate pilot reaction time) before lowering the collective. As the autorotation progressed, the helicopter developed a rate of descent that the pilot was unable to check. Subsequently, the helicopter touched down hard, the skids collapsed, and the tailboom was severed by the main rotor blades. The helicopter slid off the runway into snow and rolled onto its right side. Circumstances identified in this accident had been identified during previous investigations of flight test accidents with this helicopter, but that information had not been provided to this test pilot and flight test engineer.
Probable cause
failure of the manufacturer to follow its directive to develop corrective measures in response to known accident data, and their failure to ensure that pertinent information (in engineering department) was communicated to the test pilot and flight test engineer (in flight test).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97FA091
- Event ID
- 20001208X07311
- Case number
- LAX97FA091
- 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: 5dbb74c5d038e5b2aa58be1bf47b98ae48ddf8527b4cdd6e1b1d97b664101d3e; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:28:49.614Z.