IAD05LA075 · Hughes TH-55
Hughes TH-55 · Accident: roll over during takeoff
From 3I6 · Paintsville, KY to 3I6
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA075
- 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
Hughes TH-55
- Aircraft type
- Hughes TH-55
- 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
- N2KX
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3I6 · Paintsville, KYTo 3I6
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Roll over
- 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 › Ground resonance, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to perform a cyclic-rigging check, and a rotor-rpm check during autorotation. The pilot and a friend performed a preflight inspection, and neither noted any mechanical deficiencies. The pilot started the helicopter, and performed the run-up checks, to include the magneto check and the rotor-engagement check with the helicopter "light on the skids." The pilot then completed the before takeoff checks, and initiated a takeoff to a hover. As the pilot applied collective pitch and power for takeoff, he felt a few bumps. He was aware of the phenomena of ground resonance, and continued applying collective pitch and power, but the helicopter would not take off. Within seconds, he had no control of the helicopter, as it disintegrated around him. The friend's version of the events leading up to the accident was consistent with the pilot/owner's. According to the witness, "It happened so fast! It started to shake, a blade hit the tailboom, and it shook to pieces." He added that the helicopter never left the ground, and that it rocked side-to-side two or three times before it came apart.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadvertent encounter with ground resonance which resulted in destruction of the helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA075
- Event ID
- 20050619X00810
- Case number
- IAD05LA075
- 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: 9fc2947e45e8a2f30d62505d65d4b80c1e9651758adbe6cac0685b225fd9a4bb; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:00:24.029Z.