LAX05LA288 · Goodlett Safari
Goodlett Safari · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Ridgecrest, CA (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05LA288
- 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
Goodlett Safari
- Aircraft type
- Goodlett SAFARI
- 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
- N912TT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ridgecrest, CA (private airstrip)To 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Rotorcraft flight control, cyclic control rod › Failure, total
- Rotorcraft flight control, cyclic control rod › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental helicopter impacted terrain after experiencing a failure of a flight control connecting rod. According to the pilot, he was maneuvering the helicopter about 50 feet above the ground when he heard a loud bang followed by a whirring or buzzing noise. The helicopter rolled to the left, which the pilot was unable to counter with control inputs, and impacted terrain on the left side. A post-accident examination of the helicopter by the pilot/builder revealed that a 27.875-inch aluminum control rod was fractured near the middle of the rod. The control rod was connected between the collective-cyclic mixing assembly and a walking beam that connected to the stationary swash plate of the left side (pilot side) of the helicopter. The break in the control rod was perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the rod. Examination of the control rod by a metallurgical laboratory revealed the failure was a result of a fatigue crack that had propagated through nearly 75 percent of the control rod. A portion of the break was polished indicating that the crack had been present for quite some time. The pre-existing crack in the control rod reduced its strength to a point that allowed the flight control forces to fail the remaining material. According to the pilot/builder, a break in the control rod would result in flight characteristics consistent with that experienced by the pilot during the accident flight. The control system has been redesigned by the kit manufacturer as a result of this accident and now incorporates steel control rods as opposed to aluminum ones.
Probable cause
the in-flight fatigue failure of a control system connecting rod, which resulted in a loss of helicopter control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05LA288
- Event ID
- 20050906X01387
- Case number
- LAX05LA288
- 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: 9b2670aa74983ffb1840bb42de1b129ff1245d4f9ee1ba6c018b4321cb6ae2fe; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:54:46.884Z.