LAX00LA173 · Rotorway EXEC 162F
Rotorway EXEC 162F · Accident: airframe, component or system failure on approach
From Stellar Airpark (P19) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA173
- 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
Rotorway EXEC 162F
- Aircraft type
- Rotorway 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
- N21901
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stellar Airpark (P19), AZTo 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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
- Airframe, component or system 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
- Kit manufacturer › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Rotor drive system, engine to transmission drive › Failure, total
- Rotor drive system, tail rotor drive shaft › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter landed hard collapsing the left skid and resulting in the main rotor blades striking the tail boom. While in the traffic pattern, during the downwind leg, the pilot heard a loud noise from the rear of the helicopter. He entered an autorotation and checked the cockpit instruments. Noting no anomalies, he rolled on the throttle and discovered that the engine speed would increase but the rotor speed would not. The pilot flared to avoid a fence then landed hard. Subsequent examination of the engine secondary shaft that transmits power to the main rotor through drive belts revealed that the shaft had failed in fatigue. There were numerous longitudinal and circumferential score marks on the secondary shaft indicating removal and reinstallation of the shaft many times. The fatigue fracture originated at one of the circumferential score marks and exhibited oxidation, indicating it had been fractured for some time.
Probable cause
The inadequate maintenance inspection of the secondary shaft which resulted in its fatigue failure that emanated from a corroded circumferential score mark. A factor was the fence that the pilot flared to avoid, resulting in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA173
- Event ID
- 20001212X20864
- Case number
- LAX00LA173
- 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: 5f7fcc6b2ef00fa0f9374165449fba82b9a7f773c205f9166d0e499f5c352686; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:59:58.173Z.