MIA00LA170 · Southwest Florida Aviation SW204
Southwest Florida Aviation SW204 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From FT. PIERCE, FL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00LA170
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Southwest Florida Aviation SW204
- Aircraft type
- Southwest Florida SW204
- 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
- N37BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FT. PIERCE, FLTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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, installation, not approved
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, at 50 feet, agl and 35 mph over an orange grove, he felt a shudder and heard cracking noises from the rear of the helicopter. He tried to put the rotorcraft down between rows of trees, but lost all control during his landing attempt, started spinning, and rolled over. The tail rotor assembly was located 400 feet from the wreckage with one rotor blade tip weight missing. Factory examination revealed the cause of the separation of the tip weight was corrosion of the adhesive bond between the blade skin, the blade spar, and the tip weight. The blade's data plate was missing and the data plate recess was smoothed over. The blade part and serial number provided by the operator did not match factory assembly records, and the factory was encouraged by the FAA to file a 'Suspected Unapproved Parts' report.
Probable cause
An in-flight separation of a tail rotor blade tip weight resulting in tail rotor assembly imbalance and separation due to the installation of an unapproved rotor blade by company maintenance personnel, and the subsequent collision with trees during an emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00LA170
- Event ID
- 20001212X21080
- Case number
- MIA00LA170
- 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: 3e12d99eb7122ab233f57696644eea3e7d65418edfcaa49ceb3c2db939560d0f; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:52:23.097Z.