IAD04LA013 · Schweizer 269C
Schweizer 269C · Accident: rotor failure/malfunction en route
From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD04LA013
- 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
Schweizer 269C
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 269
- 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
- N75070
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY), Medford, NJTo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Lubricant, grease › Lack of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was flying the helicopter in cruise flight, at 800 feet, when a loss of tail rotor thrust occurred, with a "sharp metallic-sounding squeal." The student pilot then performed an autorotation which resulted in a hard landing. Examination of the tail rotor drive shaft, forward fitting teeth, revealed smearing and rubbing in the middle of the tooth surfaces. A wear/rubbing failure mechanism had been previously seen on other helicopters, that resulted from insufficient lubrication. Although the forward fitting had a significant amount of grease on it, it could not be confirmed whether grease had always been present. No significant manufacturing defects were found. With over 3,000 helicopters in service, only two similar events had been attributed to insufficient lubrication, and both occurred on same helicopter model within the previous year. Shaft loading, which was "relatively light," only required minimal lubrication to a design that had remained essentially unaltered since the 1960s. The shaft, which required an inspection every 300 hours, had last been inspected 180 hours before the accident.
Probable cause
A lack of previous lubrication to the tail rotor drive shaft forward fitting teeth, which resulted in their gradual wear, the eventual slippage of the shaft, and the subsequent loss of tailrotor thrust and forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD04LA013
- Event ID
- 20040307X00288
- Case number
- IAD04LA013
- 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: 818357b9013b5abbd305b9c5aa0298b802ec72024e315a00ca4416808aae761a; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:54:52.388Z.