LAX00TA163 · Hughes OH-6A
Hughes OH-6A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's operation. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00TA163
- 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 Possible conflict
- 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
Hughes OH-6A
- Aircraft type
- Hughes OH-6
- 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
- N61869
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, 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
- 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
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, 100-hour inspection, improper
- Rotorcraft flight control, cyclic control › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While maneuvering about 20 feet above obstacles looking for the footprints of a group of suspected illegal entrants, the U.S. Border Patrol pilot suddenly experienced an unusual vibration in the cyclic control. After the vibration started, the helicopter almost immediately started turning right and descended. The pilot attempted to stop the turn and descent, but to no avail, and he crashed in the rough terrain. The previous day a 300-hour inspection had been completed by Border Patrol mechanics, and it involved a rebuild of the swashplate assembly. During this maintenance, the cyclic control's longitudinal link (part number 369A7608) was removed and replaced at the stationary swashplate. Upon completion of the maintenance, a cotter pin is required to be installed in the link's attachment nut to secure it. The cotter pin, and the respective nut, were observed missing at the accident site. During the recent maintenance, a mechanic had failed to reinstall the cotter pin into the nut, and it backed off during flight. This maintenance oversight-related failure resulted in the pilot's complete loss of cyclic control.
Probable cause
Company maintenance personnel's failure to secure an attachment nut to a control link. While maneuvering, the parts separated and resulted in the total cyclic control system failure and impact into rough terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00TA163
- Event ID
- 20001212X20870
- Case number
- LAX00TA163
- 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: c30c01fccc4d9d03db2521d383abe74b40550e44384f00ccafc1aa8804d83f1f; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:15:07.507Z.