ATL99FA132 · Continental Copters TOMCAT MK5A TOMCAT MK5
Continental Copters TOMCAT MK5A TOMCAT MK5 and Texas Helicopter OH-13E/M74 · Accident: midair collision while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99FA132
- 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
- 2 · 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
Aircraft 1 · Continental Copters TOMCAT MK5A TOMCAT MK5
- Aircraft type
- Continental Copters TOMCAT MK5A
- 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
- N9010T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AL (no airport)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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Aircraft 2 · Texas Helicopter OH-13E/M74
- Aircraft type
- Texas OH-13
- 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
- N38099
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From AL (no airport)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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · aerial application
- 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
- Midair collision
- 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
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, not maintained
- Pilot of other aircraft › Visual lookout, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
N38099 was flying southbound at 150 ft. agl spraying herbicides. N9010T had just taken off from a flatbed truck heading north behind a gathering of trees 100 ft. tall. N9010T climb over the trees to an altitude of 150 ft. at a speed of 35 mph. He then turned east into the sun, directly into the flight path of N38099. Within seconds, N9010T collided with N38099, impacting it on its lower right side. Immediately after impacting, both helicopters descended to the ground and came to rest 100 yards apart.
Probable cause
The pilot of N9010T's failure to maintain visual lookout while maneuvering, resulting in a midair collision with N30899. A factor was the sun glare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99FA132
- Event ID
- 20001212X19686
- Case number
- ATL99FA132
- 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: 58cfee7183e455662a951463ff67744cd946edbe4823a6f48ceebb500cf60e71; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:48:13.775Z.