MIA00LA092 · Kitchens REVOLUTION MINI 500B REVOLUTION
Kitchens REVOLUTION MINI 500B REVOLUTION · Accident: hard landing
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA092
- 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
Kitchens REVOLUTION MINI 500B REVOLUTION
- Aircraft type
- Kitchens REVOLUTION MINI 500B
- 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
- N460AK
- 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 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Rotor RPM, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At an altitude of about 200 feet agl the pilot attempted a practice auto rotation into a field. According to the pilot he lowered the collective, at a forward speed of 60 mph. He then reduced the throttle. He said, '...I think I was already in trouble when I began the auto rotation from such a low altitude...[and] I also don't thing that I had the collective all the way down because...the rotor rpms apparently began to bleed down without my noticing it...at about 50 feet agl I flared...then leveled and started pulling collective. The helicopter started violently shaking...which...indicates that the rotors were trying to stall from too low rpms...I couldn't stop my decent...I don't think I powered back up with the throttle...I hit the ground fairly violently...the helicopter...roll[ed] onto its left side...and the helicopter finally came to a stop about 30 yards from the point of initial impact.' Examination of the wreckage revealed no mechanical discrepancies. According the FAA's report, the pilot '...failed to perform the autorotation correctly and impacted the earth.'
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during a practice autorotation, by allowing the rotor rpm to become inadequate to cushion the touchdown, which resulted in a hard landing, and subsequent roll over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA092
- Event ID
- 20001212X20537
- Case number
- MIA00LA092
- 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: 1cf98a3781f9851cf53b3c6c329de7bfe44da04e145ce39d5f2c427f444b7c2f; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:42:23.992Z.