LAX00LA047 · Boeing 369E
Boeing 369E · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA047
- 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
Boeing 369E
- Aircraft type
- Boeing 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
- N5238C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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 out of ground effect
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Compressor assembly, stator vane › Eroded
- Compressor assembly, stator vane › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a forced landing after an engine failure, the helicopter struck a standpipe, shearing its cross tube, and rolling onto its side. The pilot was in the process of picking up an 800-pound sling load on a 100-foot-long line. As his load reached about 90 to 100 feet agl, the engine quit. He released his load, turned to the right to avoid people and equipment on the ground, and entered autorotation. The conditions at the accident site were dusty and gritty. The engine teardown revealed that a second stage compressor vane had failed in fatigue, which resulted in a catastrophic failure of the compressor section. All first stage vanes were intact, and all third, fourth, fifth, and sixth stage vanes exhibited some degree of foreign object damage (FOD). The plastic coating on the first and second stage vanes exhibited erosion that exceeded the maximum allowable limits specified by the Rolls-Royce Allison 250-C20 Series Operation and Maintenance Manual. The first stage compressor blades were eroded, with the leading edges rolled over and scalloped. Metallurgical examination of the failed vanes revealed that they met all chemical and manufacturing process specifications. According to the maintenance records, a 300-hour inspection had been performed on the engine 130.1 flight hours before the accident. The manufacturer recommends a compressor case inspection be accomplished every 300 hours when operating in a corrosive environment. No evidence was found in the maintenance records of compressor washes being performed as recommended by the manufacturer.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of a second stage compressor vane due to erosion, which resulted in a catastrophic engine failure. An inadequate inspection of the compressor section by company maintenance personnel during the last 300-hour inspection was also causal in this accident. The maintenance personnel's failure to conduct the periodic recommended compressor washes was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA047
- Event ID
- 20001212X20129
- Case number
- LAX00LA047
- 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: 0d606adacecb94555647cfea6e5dc3c4599d9829a5a5bb8f7f5717318c862baa; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:36:20.981Z.