IAD98LA014 · Jones MINI 500
Jones MINI 500 · Accident: uncontrolled altitude deviation during takeoff
From Mercer County Airport (BLF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD98LA014
- 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
Jones MINI 500
- Aircraft type
- Jones MINI 500
- 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
- N8015E
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mercer County Airport (BLF)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
- 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
- Uncontrolled altitude deviation
- 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 › Adequate rotor RPM, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On a local flight to 'balance and adjust the flight controls,' the pilot took off down wind and climbed to 50 feet agl. He stated that 'after passing through transitional lift, the rotor began to over speed, so I reduced the throttle.' As he approached the end of the runway, the pilot 'slowed the helicopter down and started a left turn to fly down the runway to check the head balance.' As the pilot started the turn, he stated that 'I increased the throttle to the maximum, however, the rotor rpm had begun to deteriorate and the throttle would not bring it back up.' With insufficient altitude to recover, the helicopter impacted the ground collapsing the left skid, and rolled onto its side damaging the main rotor, tail boom, tail rotor, and the cockpit. The pilot stated that he had thousands of hours in turbine engine powered helicopters, but, was not familiar with reciprocating engine powered helicopters. The pilot had accumulated less than 10 hours in this helicopter.
Probable cause
Pilot's unfamiliarity with reciprocating engine powered helicopter lead to a reduction in main rotor rpm and subsequent uncontrolled rate of descent with insufficient altitude to recover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD98LA014
- Event ID
- 20001208X09192
- Case number
- IAD98LA014
- 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: 16183a4658712cd434de3f2bae57a279395247a5625b4aceb9ce46ae996f84fc; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:02:45.642Z.