LAX98LA076 · McDonnell Douglas 600N
McDonnell Douglas 600N · Accident: hard landing
From FFZ to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA076
- 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 600N
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 600
- 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
- N176SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FFZTo 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flare, misjudged
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The CFI was having the second pilot execute straight in autorotations for familiarization training. The second pilot initiated the autorotation with the rotor in the low range and the CFI instructed the second pilot to reduce collective, which increased their rate of descent. The CFI said that about 18 feet, the second pilot applied 60 percent collective, leveled somewhat, and the nose yawed to the left. The CFI applied full right pedal in an attempt to correct the yaw, but the nose remained yawed to the left approximately 15 degrees. The aircraft hit the ground with the left heel first followed by the nose pitching forward. The CFI stated he applied slight aft cyclic and felt the main rotor contact the tail boom.
Probable cause
The second pilot misjudging his flare and the delayed remedial actions by the pilot-in-command.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA076
- Event ID
- 20001211X09466
- Case number
- LAX98LA076
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-01-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e5b4703612eeb40ee9a0e8c424627916ed01990fc8b0e34ca678b22d9a8e678f; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:06:02.546Z.