ATL04LA037 · Hughes OH-6A
Hughes OH-6A · Accident: hard landing
From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL04LA037
- 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
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
- N536
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville Downtown Airport (GMU), Greenville, SCTo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flare, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the certified flight instructor (CFI), while conducting an instructional flight an autorotation was performed. After the autorotation the CFI brought the helicopter to a hover, and then climbed to an altitude of approximately 200 feet for another practice autorotation. The helicopter briefly shuttered and the aft section of the tail boom separated from the airframe. The helicopter began spinning and came to rest in a thicket of pine trees. According to a witness at the scene of the practice autorotation, he recalled hearing a loud "pop" when the helicopter touched down. The CFI did not hear or feel anything unusual during or after the autorotation, and reported a normal takeoff. A survey of the first touchdown point revealed a pie shaped piece of blue metal on the ground. Further examination revealed the pie shaped piece of metal fit an area on the tail boom. Examination revealed the main rotor blades had blue paint on the tips. No mechanical or flight control malfunctions were reported by the CFI.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper landing flare, resulting in a hard landing and a main rotor/tailboom strike.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL04LA037
- Event ID
- 20031119X01920
- Case number
- ATL04LA037
- 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: c5b534ca18cdd2525bfabfc089c169d5b5ae336925954af35d2cf2289f6e5ab6; retrieved 2026-09-22T08:10:02.241Z.