NYC05IA029 · Fairchild-Heliporter Pilatus PC6/B2-H2
Fairchild-Heliporter Pilatus PC6/B2-H2 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Cross Keys Airport (17N) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC05IA029
- 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
- Incident
- 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
Fairchild-Heliporter Pilatus PC6/B2-H2
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild Heliporter PILATUS PC6 B2-H2
- Category
- Airplane
- 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
- N7391U
- Operator
- Freefall Adventures
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cross Keys Airport (17N), Cross Keys, 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 · climb to 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Flight control, elevator attachment › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 5 minutes after takeoff, the left elevator partially separated, and fluttered for about 15-20 seconds. During that time, the pilot had difficulty controlling the airplane. The left elevator then completely separated, and the pilot regained control of the airplane. After regaining control, the pilot performed an uneventful landing. Examination of the airplane revealed that the left elevator separated about the mid-point of the horizontal stabilizer. The left elevator was attached to a bellcrank, secured by two 3/8-inch bolts. The bolts and elevator were not recovered.
Probable cause
A total failure of the left elevator attachment point for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC05IA029
- Event ID
- 20041220X02010
- Case number
- NYC05IA029
- 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. 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: ff223ff6af7fce1084c3f9f18eb1f4ae61a607cc74f9dd934f8aa70cfe069df6; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:27:31.921Z.