NYC00LA026 · Bailey EXEC 162F
Bailey EXEC 162F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Heritage Field (PTW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA026
- 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
Bailey EXEC 162F
- Aircraft type
- Bailey EXEC 162
- 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
- N14JJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Heritage Field (PTW)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 in 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
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was conducting an air taxi in his homebuilt helicopter, with his son onboard. He taxied about 1/4 mile, then turned the helicopter around to return to the point of departure. The helicopter hovered briefly in position, then 'oscillated,' and one of the rotor blades struck the ground. The helicopter did not have an airworthiness certificate, and the student pilot had not obtained operating limitations for it. At the time of the accident, the student pilot had about 11 hours of total flight time. The student pilot's last known flight had been over 8 months before the accident, and upon its completion, he received an instructor's endorsement to solo, valid for 90 days. The endorsement stated, in part, that the student pilot was competent for solo hover in winds no greater than 5 mph. Weather, recorded at the accident site 14 minutes after the accident, included winds at 12, gusting to 17 knots. According to 14 CFR Part 61, paragraph 61.89(a): 'A student pilot may not act as pilot in command of an aircraft...that is carrying a passenger.'
Probable cause
The student pilot's loss of control of the helicopter, his lack of recent experience, his lack of total experience, and his overconfidence in his personal ability. A factor in the accident was the student pilot's disregard of regulations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA026
- Event ID
- 20001212X20154
- Case number
- NYC00LA026
- 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: 05c8169620b714709dd50e925231e7d6829ea390e4cc6d784c169bac46961f37; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:21:16.099Z.