IAD03LA033 · Rotorway Exec 162F
Rotorway Exec 162F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED) to Westford, MA
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03LA033
- 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 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
- N241WC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laurence G Hanscom Field (BED), Bedford, MATo Westford, MA
- 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 · hover
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Unknown › Tail rotor effectiveness, reduced
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had just made a steep approach to a confined area and was pulling into a full hover, when the helicopter began a rapid rotation to the left. The pilot applied full right pedal, but could not stop the rotation. He did not perform an autorotation from a hover because he was concerned of landing hard, rolling over, and shedding parts that could have possibly hurt his friend, who was standing nearby. Instead, he lifted the helicopter back up and tried to fly to a vacant area. During the ascent, the pilot was able to slow the rotation by reducing power, but was never able to completely stop the rotation. He was not able to perform an autorotation because he had no forward airspeed, so he put the helicopter down into trees. The pilot stated that he had experienced Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness (LTE) in the past, but due to the strong head wind, and the sudden rapidness of the rotation, he did not feel that this was an LTE situation. An FAA inspector reported that one of the tail rotor pitch change links was fractured, but did not take possession of the link at that time. The pilot/owner initially agreed to send the pitch change link to the Safety Board to be examined, but later determined that the part had failed during impact, and discarded the wreckage.
Probable cause
The inflight loss of control due to the loss of tail rotor effectiveness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03LA033
- Event ID
- 20030310X00314
- Case number
- IAD03LA033
- 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: 64157a2b183a15ba8801d5f36d277e8eb498d680a87e4bb2bcac8c1dd1c82da0; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:31:15.733Z.