IAD05LA112 · Schweizer 269C
Schweizer 269C · Accident en route
From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD05LA112
- 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
- N399HF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Jersey Regional Airport (VAY), Mount Holly, 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 · descent
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to the helicopter instructional flight, the flight instructor and the student pilot discussed a loss of engine power during takeoff. The student pilot, who had not previously performed the maneuver, thought the flight instructor was going to demonstrate it. During the flight, while the helicopter was climbing through 400-500 feet, the flight instructor advised the student of the pending simulated engine failure, and "rolled down" the throttle. The helicopter commenced an autorotation, with the flight instructor thinking the student pilot was at the controls, and the student pilot thinking the flight instructor was at the controls. During the autorotation, when the helicopter appeared to be headed for some trees, "the collective was raised to extend the glide, but the rotor rpm was decreasing and the forward airspeed had slowed also." The helicopter cleared the trees, but at 60 feet above the ground, the rotor rpm was below the power off range. The flight instructor then "got on the controls, lowered the collective, rolled on the throttle, and flared the helicopter." The helicopter continued its descent, the tail hit the ground, and the helicopter impacted the ground in a level attitude, then rolled over.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed remedial action. A factor was the flight instructor's failure to ensure that both pilots knew who was performing the maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD05LA112
- Event ID
- 20060112X00061
- Case number
- IAD05LA112
- 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: 496cb3a3c2940621d273ab3d3936a0fe89ddf2dd108ec52ec94fe15834b4211b; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:56:28.655Z.