LAX00TA006 · McDonnell Douglas 369E
McDonnell Douglas 369E · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Hemet Ryan Airport (HMT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00TA006
- 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 369E
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 369
- 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
- N991SD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hemet Ryan Airport (HMT), Hemet, CATo 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Airspeed, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Translational lift, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Moreno Valley, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The Sheriff's Department helicopter was orbiting over ground based law enforcement activity. It was a dark night and the winds aloft were 20 to 25 knots at 500 feet agl. The pilot said he was attempting to shine the helicopter's spotlight on a vehicle; however, the wind kept blowing the helicopter past the location on each of the first two orbits. On the third orbit, the pilot inadvertently allowed the helicopter to slow below translational lift speed and the helicopter yawed 180 degrees to the right uncontrollably. The pilot momentarily recovered directional control of the helicopter but then the right yaw resumed. He made several more attempts to recover directional control of the helicopter but when he saw the altitude becoming low, he flew to a pre-selected landing zone where the helicopter landed hard while in a right yawing spin. During the landing the main rotor blades severed the tail boom and the helicopter came to rest on its right side.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain sufficient forward airspeed to preclude an inadvertent encounter with loss of tail rotor effectiveness, which resulted in a loss of yaw control. The pilot's failure to initiate timely remedial action is a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00TA006
- Event ID
- 20001212X20003
- Case number
- LAX00TA006
- 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 1999-10-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b9ae7ae73de131f2fdd6a063d9b16b06d8a091ea004c283a3fcd9d627a83da8d; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:57:02.546Z.