CHI01LA162 · Giackino Exec 162F
Giackino Exec 162F · Accident: rotor failure/malfunction while maneuvering
From Schoolcraft County Airport (ISQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA162
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
Giackino Exec 162F
- Aircraft type
- Giackino 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
- N556DG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Schoolcraft County Airport (ISQ), Manistique, MITo 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
- Rotor failure/malfunction
- 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
- Rotor drive system, main rotor drive belt › Contamination
- Rotor drive system, main rotor drive belt › Slipped
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was participating in the search for lost hunters when the main rotor drive belts began to slip and squeal. The pilot was unable to maintain rotor speed and executed a forced landing into a river. The pilot reported that there was dense forest to the left and people and vehicles to the right of his flight path. A postaccident examination of the helicopter was performed. The main rotor drive belts were found to be contaminated with a liquid. The pilot reported that the liquid was possibly engine coolant.
Probable cause
The contamination of the main rotor drive belts causing them to slip. Factors were the low altitude, unsuitable terrain for the forced landing, and the water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA162
- Event ID
- 20010620X01216
- Case number
- CHI01LA162
- 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: 12ce1c7e17a4249f50fbeca233723cd9715574899d0bdf0f415f5e968d09f757; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:52:54.012Z.