CHI04CA233 · Eurocopter AS 350 B2
Eurocopter AS 350 B2 · Accident: hard landing
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to Oakland Southwest Airport (Y47)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's operation. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04CA233
- 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
- Government Narrative disagrees
- 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
Eurocopter AS 350 B2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS-350
- 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
- N631SD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Pontiac, MITo Oakland Southwest Airport (Y47), New Hudson, MI
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Dual student › Autorotation, performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The public-use instructional flight impacted terrain during a hard landing while practicing autorotations. The private pilot stated the certified flight instructor (CFI) pulled the throttle back and she entered an autorotation. The CFI rolled the throttle back to the full on position. The helicopter was leveled and collective was pulled. The helicopter landed hard. The CFI stated that he noticed an excessive sink rate and he applied the throttle with no response. He applied cyclic to help the private pilot level the helicopter and collective to cushion the landing.
Probable cause
The autorotation performed by the dual student and the delayed remedial action by the certified flight instructor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04CA233
- Event ID
- 20040910X01397
- Case number
- CHI04CA233
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: bfa70511c10835598c025210db30c93fac54a99ca1597de7d7d1156024582bf8; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:53:09.916Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: operation. The narrative states "The public-use instructional flight impacted terrain during a hard landing while practicing autorotations"; the flight was a public aircraft operation, not Part 91 general aviation.