IAD97FA123 · Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
Fairchild Hiller FH-1100 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Pittsfield Municipal Airport (PSF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97FA123
- 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
- 1 · 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
Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
- 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
- N5045F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pittsfield Municipal Airport (PSF)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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Remedial action, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Pittsfield, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was attempting an autorotation, as part of a biennial flight review. He climbed the helicopter to 800 feet AGL, reduced the airspeed to 80 mph, lowered the collective, rolled off the throttle to split the needles, but the needles did not split. As he continued to roll off the throttle, he noticed the rpm's in the low green area, and the helicopter began to descend rapidly. Within 5 seconds, the helicopter descended, and landed hard against a bank rising from a swamp. A post accident investigation revealed the pilot's collective in the full up position. Control continuity was established from the pilot's collective and cyclic control, to the main rotor system. The left collective and left cyclic sustained impact damage. No pre-impact abnormalities were observed. The first pilot receiving the biennial reported over 499 hours of flight experience in this make and model, and used the helicopter in a scenic ride business. The second pilot had logged over 5,186 of total helicopter flight experience, including 4 hours in this make and model, which he logged 30 years ago. Since his biennial in a Cessna 150, he logged over 150 hours of helicopter time.
Probable cause
The first pilot's improper procedures for an autorotation, and improper flare which resulted in a hard landing. Also causal was the second pilot's inadequate remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97FA123
- Event ID
- 20001208X08867
- Case number
- IAD97FA123
- 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: 29b48cd88680910baa0a12fab8ca2f1022a045ae727504f4a6529010bb79139b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:48:15.691Z.