DEN05FA080 · Schweizer 269C
Silver State Helicopters Schweizer 269C · Accident: loss of engine power on approach
From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB) to Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05FA080
- 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
- N311CP
- Operator
- Silver State Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB), Pueblo, COTo Pueblo Memorial Airport (PUB)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According the flight instructor during the second traffic pattern, they "climbed to approximately 1000 feet AGL with the intention of practicing an autorotation entry and glide with a power recovery and go-around at about 200-300 [feet] AGL." The flight instructor stated that both pilots were at the controls on final. He stated that after lowering collective, the engine rpm "went straight to [zero]." The flight instructor stated that he took control of the helicopter while his student attempted an engine restart. He did not recall any further events until after the impact. According to one witness the helicopter impacted the runway hard, splitting both landing skids out laterally. The helicopter rolled over on its left side and a fire ensued. Density altitude was calculated to be 7,162 feet. According to the weight and balance calculations performed by the student and flight instructor prior to the accident, the helicopter's weight was calculated to be 1,859.6 pounds. According to the Pilot's Flight Manual (PFM), performance figure 5-3 (gross weight versus density altitude diagram), based on the density altitude of 7,162 feet, the helicopter should have been at a maximum weight of 1,600 pounds in order to maintain the autorotation characteristics of the helicopter presented in performance figure 5-2 (height/velocity diagram). An examination of the helicopter's engine and systems revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during the attempted autorotation after the loss of engine power for reasons undetermined. Contributing factors include the flight instructor's improper preflight planning, the high density altitude, and the attempted autorotation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05FA080
- Event ID
- 20050617X00801
- Case number
- DEN05FA080
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-06-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 24f42ad91c254970b2832f490c39faeff9dbaadd0a6b79bc137ef8232e4970c9; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:06:25.132Z.