LAX05TA018 · Hughes OH-6A
Tucson Sector Air Operations Hughes OH-6A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
From Ajo, AZ to Tucson International Airport (TUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05TA018
- 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
- 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
- N6188L
- Operator
- Tucson Sector Air Operations
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ajo, AZTo Tucson International Airport (TUS), 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
- 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Engine accessories, engine starter › Vibration
- Fuel system, pc line › Fatigue
- Fuel system, pc line › Separation
- Unknown › Maintenance, rebuild/remanufacture, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The engine spooled down during a law enforcement surveillance flight, and the pilot made a hard forced landing in uneven terrain. The crew was performing surveillance at low altitude above an uneven wash, and the pilot was in slow sideward flight. He pulled the collective to gain altitude and airspeed to make another pass. Then he heard and felt the engine spool down. He said that it quit producing power completely, and he attempted to autorotate to the ground. He said that he had insufficient airspeed and altitude to complete a successful autorotation. The helicopter hit the ground hard in a near level attitude. It bounced backwards, and rotated 45 degrees to the right. Metallurgical examination revealed that the governor tee to fuel control PC line fractured as a result of fatigue. The tubes were bent with contours differing from the original manufactured shape, indicative of handling/assembly damage. Disassembly and inspection of the starter/generator revealed conditions indicative of wear and misassembly, including the wrong bearings being installed, which would cause the unit to operate in an out-of-balance condition and induce vibrations.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to a fatigue fracture of the PC line from the governor to fuel control, resulting from fretting damage induced by excessive vibration, which was due to the failure of maintenance personnel to install the proper bearings in the starter/generator. A contributing factor was the loss of power at low altitude and airspeed (height/velocity limitation) which diminished the possibility of a successful autorotation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05TA018
- Event ID
- 20041116X01830
- Case number
- LAX05TA018
- 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: 4b827304028e63572b7c6710514e6b796233620e1983191298523ebb80b7aabb; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:16:21.897Z.