LAX03LA011 · Rotorway 162F
Rotorway 162F · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Ryan Field (KRYN) to Ryan Field (KRYN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA011
- 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
Rotorway 162F
- Aircraft type
- Rotorway 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
- N162AZ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ryan Field (KRYN), Tucson, AZTo Ryan Field (KRYN), Tucson, AZ
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Rotor drive system, engine to transmission drive › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following a drive shaft failure, the helicopter collided with high vegetation and rolled over during an autorotation. In a statement to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector, the pilot reported that while performing pattern and ground reference maneuvers, the helicopter experienced a mechanical malfunction. The pilot executed an autorotation and contacted high vegetation with the helicopter's right skid, resulting in the helicopter rolling to the left and impacting terrain. The pilot disposed of the helicopter in a waste dump prior to examination by FAA inspectors and the nature of the mechanical malfunction could not be determined. In a telephone interview with a Safety Board investigator, the pilot reported that the secondary shaft broke in half, resulting in a loss of drive power to the helicopter's main rotor. The pilot was aware of the advisory service bulletin issued by the kit manufacturer suggesting replacement of the secondary shaft assembly, but had not complied. Beginning in May 1995, the kit manufacturer released four separate Advisory Bulletins (A-23, A-26, A-32 and A-34) addressing installation, inspection, and shaft design change issues. Citing a history of secondary shaft failures, the most recent advisory bulletin at the time of the accident, issued May 2002, recommended replacement of the standard 30 mm secondary shaft with an upgraded 35 mm shaft.
Probable cause
the failure of the secondary drive shaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA011
- Event ID
- 20021023X05371
- Case number
- LAX03LA011
- 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, coordinates. 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: bb1d62879feb95bc9f81bccb53b73d6c264780d11de2cc6af59ebc43121f4261; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:02:36.598Z.