CHI98LA152 · Read ROTORWAY EXECUTIVE ROTORWAY E
Read ROTORWAY EXECUTIVE ROTORWAY E · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid while maneuvering
From Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA152
- 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
Read ROTORWAY EXECUTIVE ROTORWAY E
- Aircraft type
- Read ROTORWAY EXECUTIVE
- 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
- N4561C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porter County Municipal Airport (VPZ)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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot pushed the helicopter out of the hangar, preflighted it, started it, and warmed it up to operating minimums. He lifted off of the ground to an approximate height of 12 inches. That is when he heard a 'clunk' from behind him. The pilot said that he thought that something might have gone through the tail rotor, so he turned the helicopter to the left 180 degrees. Seeing nothing, the pilot decided to set down. At that point, the helicopter pitched over on it's right side. The pilot said that he 'neglected to remove the transport wheels' before flight. Examination of the helicopter revealed that both transport wheels were installed on the skids.
Probable cause
the pilot not maintaining adequate clearance with the ground during hover. Factors which contributed to this accident were the pilot's execution of a hovering turn at too low of an altitude, inadequate preflight preparation, and failing to remove the transport wheels from the helicopter skids prior to flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA152
- Event ID
- 20001211X10012
- Case number
- CHI98LA152
- 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: 874f8396ad46876c84fe77fb4e07ed2177de9535f10338aa9bf5c916d9378db4; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:47:59.963Z.