ATL98LA065 · Schweizer 269C
Schweizer 269C · Accident: rotor failure/malfunction during landing
From Ceiba, PR (no airport) to Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (SIG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL98LA065
- 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
Schweizer 269C
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 269
- 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
- N61193
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ceiba, PR (no airport)To Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (SIG), San Juan, PR
- 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
- 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
- Rotor failure/malfunction
- 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
- Control interference › Inadvertent
- Miscellaneous eqpt/furnishings, cargo restraints › Entangled
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, improper use of
- Pilot in command › Load tie-down/security, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of San Juan, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
According to the FAA, the pilot had a cargo strap in an external basket which blew out of the container and wrapped around the tail rotor, damaging the pitch change links, and the 90 degree gearbox. The pilot attempted to hover during a run on landing, and the helicopter began spinning and impacted the ground. According to the pilot, he heard a bang, and then lost control of the anti-torque rotor pedals. Prior to touchdown, the helicopter yawed to the right, made a 360 degree turn, and impacted the ground. The Schweizer Aircraft Corp. Pilot's Flight Manual states that in the event of a tail rotor failure, a pilot should enter autorotation. The FAA's Advisory Circular 61-13B states that during the run on landing procedure, directional control should be maintained with cyclic control and by applying throttle to swing the nose to the right. One should not attempt to hover during a run on landing because it puts the helicopter at a high power setting. Autorotation should be used if the tail rotor failure occurs during a hover or if dangerous attitudes are incurred through the addition of power.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to adequately secure the cargo strap which became entangled in the tail rotor, leading to a loss of the tail rotor control. This was followed by an improperly executed emergency procedure and an in-flight collision with the ground. A factor was the inadequate procedure supplied by the manufacturer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL98LA065
- Event ID
- 20001211X09802
- Case number
- ATL98LA065
- 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: 300fc103dc9b157b4a6eb17f8330df67034a7e16749b2ab2659f52543f7a3108; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:50:35.019Z.